Senior Medical Advisor & Supervisor, Office of the Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA 

Volunteer experience that relates to this position: 

Founding president, AGU GeoHealth section. Working in partnership with AGU staff and two co-officers to create a new 12-member leadership team that is balanced between experienced and early-career scientists. Efforts, and ongoing related work, to establish the GeoHealth section are in concert with the AGU Strategic Plan, resulting in novel cross-sectional alliances and projects, expanded AGU membership, and an increasingly rich and diverse Fall Meeting scientific venue for transdisciplinary science and human health.

The AGU strategic plan represents a significant pivot for AGU. Board members must work together with each other, other volunteer leaders, and staff to play a key role in implementing the plan. What are the key features of the strategic plan that you find most exciting? What features do you think will be most challenging? As a Board member how would you advance the strategic plan?

The AGU strategic plan strongly coincides with my personal and professional aspirations to advance science not only for knowledge and discovery but also to the benefit of humanity and the environment through science-based solutions, an inclusive culture, and the fostering of diverse partnerships.

The greatest challenges include the building of meaningful bridges between parallel scientific universes and bending the AGU community toward solution-based goals. Progress will have to be made gradually, in open forums, with a clear recognition of the need to simultaneously address barriers such as stove piped funding, avenues for authorship and recognition, and often intangible benefits at the individual level.

To help advance the strategic plan, I bring to the Board my vast experience as a physician and public health official, running the breadth of basic and applied science, academic research, and public policy, in partnership with the geoscience community. As founding president of the AGU GeoHealth section, I had a wonderful opportunity to learn about AGU and to develop new ideas to support the convergence of Earth, planetary, and environmental health sciences through transdisciplinary collaborations, engagement of early-career scientists, and innovative forums for exchange. To this end, I will endeavor to understand the incredibly diverse perspectives across AGU to generate new objectives, governance, and organizational directions that are reflective of the membership.

Together we can harness our membership and foster exciting efforts, such as the Thriving Earth Exchange, that will help to fuel discovery and new partnerships and expanded application of scientific solutions to benefit our world.

Section Affiliations: GeoHealth