LAUSR

The Asian Biophysics Association (ABA) represents biophysical societies from Australia (Hill 2019), China (Xu 2019), Hong Kong (Zhu 2019), India (Jagannathan 2019), Japan (Kandori 2019), Korea (Lim et al. 2019) and Taiwan (Lyu 2019), and aims to strengthen and promote biophysics in the Asia-Pacific region. The ABAwas founded at the 5th East Asian Biophysics Symposium (EABS) held in Okinawa in 2006 as an Asian academic association t. At that time, the incorporation of Australia and India was approved by five original members (China-Beijing, China-Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea) resulting in the seven-country association. The 6th ABA Symposium, that inherited the spirit and numbering of EASB, was held in Hong Kong in 2009. The past president of ABA (2015–2018) was Professor Xiyun Yan from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. The current president of ABA is Associate Professor Danny Hatters from The University of Melbourne. The Australian Society for Biophysics (ASB) was formed in 1975, the first annual general meeting being held at the University of New England, Armidale, in 1976, with annual conferences held for the 42 years since. The current President of the Society was Dr. Adam Hill from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Sydney. This special issue of Biophysical Reviews is based on the proceedings of the first joint meeting between the ABA and the ASB. The meeting was held at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, from the 2nd to the 6th of December 2018. It represents the 10th ABA Symposium and the 42nd Annual Conference of the ASB.