Dear ICGI members:

This is to inform you that we have concluded our 2019 election for new ICGI officers, and the ICGI Executive Steering Committee has ratified the election results.

Attached are a spreadsheet and its ratification that detail the election results. Among the 378 members listed on the ICGI website, 323 were registered as voting members. Over the 2019 election period from April 1 to May 1, a total of 172 ICGI voting members cast their ballots and thus was 53.25%. There were small numbers among the 172 voting members who did not cast their votes to all offices, indicating "Abstain" from votes of the same numbers short of the 172 total.

Please join me in thanking all running candidates, and congratulating the following winners who received the greatest number of votes in each category and thus were deemed to be elected per ICGI C&BL VII.1 (g).

ICGI Overall Co-Chair: Todd Campbell, USDA-ARS, Florence, South Carolina, USA;

Breeding & Applied Genomics Workgroup Co-Chair: Wuwei Ye, CAAS-CRI, Anyang, Henan, China;

Comparative & Bioinformatics Workgroup Co-Chair: Amanda Hulse-Kemp, USDA-ARS, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA;

Functional Genomics Workgroup Co-Chair: Xueying Guan, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China;

Germplasm & Genetic Stocks Workgroup Co-Chair: Lori Hinze, USDA-ARS, College Station, Texas, USA;

Structural Genomics Workgroup Co-Chair: Youlu Yuan, CAAS-CRI, Anyang, Henan, China.

Thus, our new (2019-2021) workgroup leadership looks like this:

Workgroup                                                                   Chair                                  Co-Chair*

ICGI Overall                                                                  Tianzhen Zhang               Todd Campbell

Breeding and Applied Genomics                              Shuijin Zhu                        Wuwei Ye

Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics           Joshua Udall                     Amanda Hulse-Kemp

Functional Genomics                                                  Shuangxia Jin                    Xueying Guan

Germplasm & Genetic Stocks                                   Md Tehseen Azhar           Lori Hinze

Structural Genomics                                                   Peng Chee                         Youlu Yuan

*Upon the 2021 election, the Co‐Chairs will assume the respective Chair positions.

Please also join me in thanking our past executive steering committee members for their many contributions to our dialogue and decision-making over the past two years:

Tianzhen Zhang (Overall Co-Chair)

Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov (Workgroup Chair)

Md Tehseen Azhar (Workgroup Co-chair)

Peng Chee (Workgroup Co-chair)

Xiongming Du (Workgroup Chair)

Wangzhen Guo (Workgroup Chair)

Shuangxia Jin (Workgroup Co-chair)

Jodi Scheffler (Workgroup Chair)

Guoli Song (Workgroup Chair)

Joshua Udall (Workgroup Co-chair)

Shuijin Zhu (Workgroup Co-chair)

Don Jones (Chair of the Advisory Committee)

Steve Hague (Secretary/Treasurer)

Jing Yu (Website/Membership Coordinator)

In parting, I wish to thank you all and the rest of the cotton industry and research community for the trust and support in many ways for me to serve another term. I am confident that cotton genomics is entering a new era that will help translate past accomplishments of knowledge and resources into real applications of cotton improvement. At present, ICGI is working on a white paper of strategic plans to explore and capture such expanded possibilities. You are encouraged to provide input to the writing committee through new chair Tianzhen Zhang and new co-chair Todd Campbell. As announced early this year, our next biennial research conference will be held in Rehovot, Israel on August 3-6, 2020. Yehoshua Saranga and Deborah Art-Weisman of the local organizing committee are currently working with Dorrie Main and Jing Yu of the CottonGen team to develop an ICGI conference webpage that will have all necessary information. Please stay involved in ICGI with the new leadership!

John Z. Yu

Past Chair, ICGI

On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 6:26 PM Yu, John <John.Yu@ars.usda.gov> wrote: