It was a great pleasure to host you all for the IUBS Centenary Year celebration. I hope you found the event as rewarding and inspiring as I did, much of which was the result of the fantastic talks we heard over the four days. With the exception of being in charge of the program during the first day (at the Academy), my role was small. Instead, it was the fantastic organizing team (with members from Oslo, Paris, and Pune) who made it all go so smoothly. Thanks to the entire organizing team!

I strongly believe that the focus on unifying biology through diversity is vital to the biological sciences. Further, we must both seek specialized knowledge and synthesize knowledge across disciplines. Through the combination of different approaches and disciplines (and sub-disciplines, if you like), it is now possible to answer more questions than ever before, including questions that we didn’t previously know or even dare to ask. There are great opportunities within biology today, and, as I and others have suggested, this century may indeed be the century of biology. So together, let’s make biology great again by making IUBS even greater than it already is. In order to do so, we must continue our push to bring together people and ideas across the broad range of biological sub-disciplines.

I look forward to seeing you all at the next IUBS General Assembly in 2022 (perhaps in Japan)! Let us hope that there will be twice (at least) as many biologists at the 2022 General Assembly as there were here in Oslo! If so, we will be in an even stronger position to ensure inclusivity and to make integrative and innovative approaches to biological questions a core feature of the biological sciences.

Oslo 05.08.19

Nils Chr. Stenseth, on behalf of the organizing team