Dear Colleagues,

It is a few months now that the new ISA officers are in charg e and we would like to take the liberty to inform you about activities and plans.

New Board Members
All board members, except our website editor Monica Vasquez-Levin (Argentina), were newly elected in their position at the 1^th International Congress of Andrology in May 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Beside the officers and editor named to the left Patricia Quasnicu (Argentina) and Jorma Toppari (Finland) were elected as councilors of ISA. We all are looking forward to serve ISA and andrology in general. The ISA officers have established regular teleconference meetings at approx. six week intervals to discuss and decide ongoing business.

Acknowledgements
The last ICA brought together many colleagues from around the world, but to those who could not have been in Copenhagen, we would like to stress the great job the head of LOC Nils Jorgensen and the head of POC Gail Cornwall together with their respective teams did to make this meeting so successful. It is also time to acknowledge the dedicated work of the previous council who served ISA in the function of Secretary (Stefan Schlatt) or as Treasurer (Csilla Krausz) for eight years or as President (John Aitken, Australia) for the last four years.

Welcome
We have recently received an expression of interest of the Sudanese Society of Andrology led by its current President Dr. Omer Ali Abd Alla (known as Omer Kombali) to join ISA. We hope that joining forces of ISA with the Sudanese Society of Andrology will strengthen andrology in Sudan and Africa.

WHO
The new officers have put an emphasis to tighten and strengthen links to the WHO. ISA with its 43 national member societies is best situated to be the voice to promote a stronger emphasis of the role of the male partner, in a WHO program that is currently predominantly focused on the female aspects of reproductive health. In this regard, Andreas Meinhardt has attended the annual meeting of the Human Reproduction Programme of the WHO, one of the large sections of WHO, in Geneva. ISA was the only society registered as an NGO to the WHO at this meeting which was representing the role of the male partner, whilst female aspects were strengthened by quite a number of different societies related to reproductive medicine or gynecology. It will certainly take perseverance to move ahead in our endeavors.

12^thInternational Congress of Andrology in 2020
The General Assembly of ISA has elected the bid of the President of the German Society of Andrology (DGA) Hermann Behre to host the 12th International Congress of Andrology (ICA) from December 9-12, 2020 in Muenster, Germany. Muenster is a picturesque city in Northern Germany and has a famous Christmas market which is open during the time of the congress. The DGA has already started preparations. Both the DGA and ISA will update you regularly about news related to the 12^thICA. Please pencil the date in your calendar. It is an event not to miss. First information and pictures can be found on the ISA homepage (www.andrology.org).

ISA Andrology Award
ISA has stablished the ISA Andrology Award to honor a worthy person, who has done major steps to establish andrology in their respective country and trained andrologists to perpetuate the field. All ISA member societies can propose candidates with a letter of approx. 2 pages reflecting the achievements of the candidate for the development of andrology plus a CV of the candidate. Applications shall be send to the Secretary of ISA Peter Liu not later than 30^th June each year. Thus the first deadline is the 30^th June 2018 for the 2019 ISA Andrology Award.
Detailed information about the application, selection and award process including an official nomination form will be available from the ISA website (www.andrology.org) later this year. ISA will keep member societies informed about news related to the ISA Andrology Award.

ISA meeting support
Recent ISA support is for the following meetings:

• The European Testis Workshop in Obidos, Portugal.
  May 23-27, 2018.Website:http://www.etw2018.org/
  
  
• 43rd Annual Conference of the American Society of Andrology
  April 21 – 24, 2018, Portland, Oregon. (https://andrologysociety.org/home.aspx)
  
  
• 10th Meeting NYRA (Network for Young Researchers in Andrology)
  September 2017, Brussels, Belgium.
  
  
• Indo-German Workshop on Assisted Reproduction and Fertility Preservation
  September 2017, Muenster, Germany.