The 5th conference of the European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology, on Mathematical Modeling & Computing in Biology and Medicine, was held in Milano, Italy from July 2-6, 2002. Events took place at both the University of Milano and the Politecnico. The conference brought together a variety of researchers from all over the world, including many graduate students and other young researchers.

The conference opened with an interesting lecture by Mimmo Iannelli on the life of Vito Volterra and his contributions to mathematical biology. There were also invited lectures, minisymposia, and contributed talks throughout the conference on a variety of topics including:

Individual Based Models,
Cell Signaling and Cellular Organization,
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology,
Infectious Diseases,
Immunology,
Evolution,
Ecology,
Stochastic Modeling,
Cardiovascular Systems,
Space and Patterns,
Computational Neurosciences, and
Tumor Growth and Therapy.

At the end of the meeting the conference organizers announced that a proceedings volume will be compiled and published as a volume of the series MIRIAM (the Milan Research Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics).

At the social dinner, where the participants enjoyed a wonderful Italian meal, the ESMTB had several announcements of interest to members of the SMB. First, the society announced that it has adopted the Journal of Mathematical Biology as its official journal. Second, the society announced that it is considering reciprocal membership agreements with both the Society for Mathematical Biology and the Japanese Society for Mathematical Biology. The latter is an issue that is also under discussion by the SMB. The members of the SMB board welcome your input.

More on the meeting can be found at the website http://ecmtb.mat.unimi.it/.