Professor, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado

AGU embraces the global community and welcomes diverse leaders from around the world, representing various identities, voices, and perspectives. List any identities, voices, and perspectives you would bring, including but not limited to nationality, regional representations, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and any other identity you feel comfortable sharing.

I feel that I would bring multiple perspectives to the position of Secretary of the Atmospheric Sciences section. First, I emigrated from the Netherlands to the U.S. in 1994 and became a U.S. citizen in 2010. I am familiar with the challenges of immigrant scientists and non-native English speakers working in the U.S. Second, I spent part of my professional career working as a research scientist in a research laboratory and part as a faculty member at a university. I am therefore also familiar with the challenges and opportunities working in both types of research and education environments.

Volunteer experience that relates to this position:

My service to AGU includes: Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres from 2009-2013. Member of multiple Editor and Editor-in-Chief search committees for AGU Journals (Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Geophysical Research Letters, Earth’s Future). Member of the AGU Kaula Award committee from 2018 until present. Convener of multiple sessions at AGU Fall Meetings.

As one of the elected leaders of your section, how will you partner with your president and president-elect to communicate with and engage your members to help implement AGU’s strategic plan including its mission and vision?

One of the main tasks of the Atmospheric Sciences secretary is to organize and shape the AGU Fall Meetings in collaboration with the section’s president, president-elect and AGU leadership. As our community emerges from the pandemic and the AGU Fall Meeting has returned to a near-normal format, it is essential to implement lessons learned from the past and to fully seize on opportunities for remote participation. The AGU Fall Meeting is the global meeting in the geosciences, and it will remain at the forefront of the geosciences if it opens its doors fully to all participants. In addition, the geosciences are playing an essential role in understanding environmental challenges of societal importance including climate change and atmospheric pollution. The AGU Fall Meeting will continue to provide a forum for presenting basic research, but it will also and increasingly need to provide a forum to present and discuss the scientific underpinnings of solutions to these environmental challenges. In many cases, this research will be inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary, and the AGU Fall Meetings needs to provide a forum for this in collaboration with partner societies.

Section affiliations:

Atmospheric Sciences