members learn about and apply such techniques, we provide opportunities for learning and collaboration. With most of our postdoctorate members in industry, we promote ties with academic departments such as mathematics and engineering that have traditionally been less well connected with the biopharma industry and yet are home to quantitative expertise and techniques that could benefit the industry.

Wojciech Krzyzanski agreed to serve as the first MCS chair. Helen Moore and Gilbert Koch took the roles of Vice Chair and Secretary, respectively. Frank Gibbons was elected as the next Secretary during the first election cycle, and the other roles rotated upward/onward. Approximately 45 ISoP members have joined the MCS SIG, with about one ‐third in academia. A steering committee to help determine goals and strategies and to suggest andwere assembled by former merchants and bankers: the Borghesi family, who established their master manor in the shape of a stronghold, at Palazzo, and the Pecci, who in Poggiarello edificated their own one, the castello del Poggiarello di Stigliano. Further on, a farm of the sienese hospital Santa Maria della Scala was sold to the Placidi(and became an estate said Poderina, rebuilt in neogothic style in XIX century). Another renaissance villa, neglected and transformed in a farmhouse, is in Piaggia, once owned by the Venturi-Gallerani.

Travel and tourism

Not far from the famous medieval city of Siena in Tuscany, the hilltop village of Stigliano, divided into medioeval hamlets named Poggiarello, Poggio, Palazzo, Borgolozzi is today a popular tourist location. With its impressive stone towers standing as sentinels over the valley,