The 19th Gatherings in Biosemiotics Moscow, Russia July 1 - July 5, 2019
The 19th Gatherings in Biosemiotics Moscow, Russia July 1 - July 5, 2019

Summary/Abstract: The idea to organize Gatherings in Biosemiotics in Moscow was initially suggested to me by Kalevi Kull at the Code Biology meeting in Koszeg, Hungary in May 2017. At that time, however, I did not believe that it was possible for me to organize the meeting in Moscow while living far away in the USA. Although I have friends in Moscow who participated in research groups on theoretical biology in 1970s and on biosemiotics in 1988-1990, but they were not affiliated with Moscow State University (MSU) and were not recently involved in biosemiotics research. Thus, I told Kalevi that his idea was not realistic. In a couple of weeks, I was in Moscow visiting my mom, and I received an email from Evelina Deyneka saying that she talked with Kalevi and decided to establish contacts with the Faculty of Philosophy at MSU and discuss the possibility of organizing the Gatherings in Biosemiotics there. She sent me all the contact information, and in a couple days I visited the Faculty of Philosophy, where I met the Dean, Vladimir Mironov, and Deputy-Deans Anna Kostikova, Alexei Kozyrev, and Stanislav Bushev. Stanislav defended his PhD thesis on the topic “Biosemiotics as a paradigm of developing theoretical biology”, and thus, he knew what biosemiotics was about. After the official meeting, me and Stanislav had a long talk and decided to try organizing the conference at MSU. The idea was approved by the Dean. Later at the end of June I met Kalevi Kull and Don Favareau at the World Congress of Semiotics in Kaunas 2017. Kalevi explained that the 2018 Gatherings was already planned, and thus, the meeting in Moscow could be aimed at 2019. In April 2018, I had heart bypass surgery, which slowed me down. Thus, I could not attend the Gatherings meeting in June at Berkeley. But I and Stanislav Bushev worked out the preliminary plan of the meeting and prepared slides to be presented in Berkeley. Our plan was accepted at the Gatherings in Berkeley and in November we sent out the Call for Papers. We received over 40 abstracts, of which 37 were selected as oral presentations, and two as posters. Evaluation of talks was done by me, Kalevi Kull, and Victoria Alexander. I designed the program trying to put related talks together, assigning high priority talks to first days, and also considering special requests from people arriving late or departing early.

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