APECS , shaping the future of polar research

In late September, I attended a workshop in Sweden for the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS). This group has grown out of the International Polar Year 2007 - 2009 (IPY), which is an international effort to focus global scientific resources and attention on the polar regions and people.

Participants, varying from senior undergraduates to young Professors were drawn from essentially two different backgrounds: IPY Education and Outreach groups from around the world, and an early APECS incarnation which was largely focused on early-career issues. The process of combing to form a single organization and agreeing on its structure, positioning, mandate, objectives and potential funding sources was challenging and absorbing. However we do now have those things, and are working towards several flag-ship activities in the next two years including career-development workshops at major science conferences, and an International IPY conference planned for Edmonton, Canada, May 2009.

This process was greatly expedited by discussions with and guidance from half a dozen key senior scientists and science planners/ administrators. Personally, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn from and work with a group of young, motivated scientists as well as these mentors. I’m now on the five-person interim executive which will establish the group under the coordination of Jen Baeseman at the Arctic Region Council of the US (ARCUS) also housed in Fairbanks. It was actually quite an exciting feeling to have made what we all agreed was pretty significant progress at the workshop. The obvious challenge is to maintain that forward momentum with us scattered back to our day jobs!

I didn’t actually get much of a chance to see Sweden at all. We met at Sanga Saby conference center about 40 km from Stockholm, but after a late arrival and taxi ride on Wednesday night, I only got half a day in the city on Sunday. Just long enough to get in some ‘city time’, see a few sights around the central city islands, and see Germany bet Brazil 2-0 in a great final of the womens’ soccer world cup. The 10 hour time difference was a challenge late in the evenings, but at least made it easy to take a couple of early morning runs.