Professor and Australian Laureate Fellow, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

AGU embraces the global community and welcomes leaders 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 anything else you feel comfortable sharing.

I am a first-generation Australian scientist of European heritage, born and educated in Croatia before completing my Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral positions at Scripps and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and building my career at the Australian National University in Canberra. This trajectory has given me a perspective that bridges Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region, and I am attuned to the challenges facing scientists from smaller, less-resourced research communities who aspire to contribute to global science.

As a seismologist based in the Southern Hemisphere, I represent a geographic voice that remains underrepresented in AGU leadership. My research collaborations span Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia, and I have actively mentored students and early career researchers from India, Nepal, Vietnam, China, Korea, Taiwan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Brazil and the United States, with a sustained commitment to gender balance in my research group.

I am fluent in Croatian and English, with intermediate Spanish, and I understand firsthand how language and cultural barriers shape participation in international scientific discourse. I am committed to maintaining AGU's seismology community as scientifically inclusive and globally representative.

Volunteer experience that you feel relates to this position:

Chair, AGU Seismology section Fellows Review Committee (2024); Member (2022 and 2023). Chair, AGU Keiiti Aki Early Career Award Committee (2020); Member (2018 and 2019). Elected member, International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior (IASPEI)/International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics Executive Committee (2023–2027). Member, AGU Gutenberg Lecture Selection Committee (2026–2028). Convener and chair of multiple AGU special sessions on Earth's structure and earthquake source physics. AGU member since 1997; AGU Fellow since 2020.

The section secretary role is determined by individual sections. If needed, the secretary might be asked to serve as an alternate to the president or president-elect at a Council meeting.

As part of the section leadership team, how will you work in partnership with your president, president-elect, other leaders, and staff to communicate with and engage your members to achieve AGU’s vision, values, mission, and goals?

The secretary's role is primarily one of communication and continuity within the section leadership team. I would work closely with the president and president-elect to ensure that decisions are communicated clearly to the membership and that member perspectives are represented in leadership discussions. This does not require reinventing how the section operates, but it does require consistency, attentiveness, and follow-through.

My experience chairing the Seismology Fellows Review Committee and the Keiiti Aki Early Career Award Committee has given me a practical understanding of how the section functions and what its members value. I would draw on that familiarity to support the leadership team effectively, including stepping in at Council meetings when needed.

AGU's strategic goals of catalyzing discovery, promoting an inclusive scientific culture, and partnering broadly are ones I genuinely share, reflected in how I have run my own research group and engaged with the international seismological community through IASPEI. I would bring that same orientation to the secretary role, with particular attention to ensuring that members from smaller or less-represented research communities feel that the section is accessible and relevant to them. These are modest but meaningful contributions that I believe I can deliver reliably.