Tuesday evening, December 19, 2017 was a special night for members and their friends of the SCBA DC Baltimore Chapter, who gathered at the New Forture Chinese restaurant located in Gaithersburg, Maryland for their annual holiday gala. Eighty some local chapter members and friends, including president of the National Institutes of Health Chinese Students & Scholars Association (NIH-CSSA), Dr. Ziyi Liu and president-elect of the Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association (CBA), Dr. Frank Li, along with many of their members attended this event. Dr. Xin Wei Wang, the chapter President, along with Secretary Dr. Yufei Jiang and President-Elect, Dr. Li Yang and Treasurer, Dr. Ji Juo organized this event. Many volunteers managed the reception desk including party registration and SCBA membership enrollment. Dr. Li Yang gave a welcome remark. Dr. Xin Wei Wang delivered an annual report. In his report, Dr. Wang emphasized the importance of annual scientific symposium sponsored by the SCBA DC Baltimore Chapter, which brings local scientists together to promote scientific communication/collaborations, as well as to provide the social network platforms for our local SCBA members. He also summarized the success of many scientific and social activities for members of our local chapter in 2017, including a sponsorship of the KT Jeang Memorial Lecture, which was delivered by Dr. XJ Meng of the Virginia Tech who discovered swine hepatitis E virus. Dr. Wang pledged the support to continue our partnership with NIH-CSSA. On this spirit, many NIH Investigators/SCBA senior members at NIH served as the scientific adviser for NIH-CSSA, and members from NIH-CSSA also actively participated in SCBA local chapter activities and became SCBA member in 2017. Dr. Ji Luo, Treasurer of the SCBA DC Baltimore Chapter, provided a summary of SCBA local chapter financial report. Dr. Ziyi Liu gave a brief introduction of NIH-CSSA and their annual activities in 2017. Dr. Frank Li provided an overview about CBA and its activities and a pledge to continue our long term partnership and strong connection among local Chinese societies. An example includes our joint workshop to be held in the 2017 CBA Annual Scientific conference. Three SCBA active members/NIH investigators, Drs. Chengkai Dai, Chun Zhang Yang, Yihong Ye were the featured speakers in this workshop co-chaired by Dr. Wang and Dr. Yali Fu, a member of CBA.

A major feature of this year’s holiday gala was a keynote talk delivered by Dr. Hannah Valantine, a physician scientist who also serves as Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce at NIH. The title of her talk is “Leadership Promotion in Asian Scientists”. In addition, she also briefly introduced her cardiological research. Her talk was very well-received.

Another new activity at the gala was dinner entertainment brought by our members, Dr. Ziyi Liu who played Guzheng and Dr. Paul Liu who played violin. Their music brought joy and festivities to our gala.

At the dinner party, Dr. Ji Luo was elected as the President –Elect for SCBA DC Baltimore Chapter. He is an Investigator at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH and a strong supporter to SCBA DC-Baltimore Chapter.

At the dinner party, Dr. Xin Wei Wang and Dr. Yufei Jiang received an award from our chapter in recognition of their outstanding leadership and service to the Chapter.

A total of 82 scientists from local universities, NIH and FDA attended this year’s Holiday gala.