Professor Jia Gensuo (third from left in the second row) at a meeting of the RCAP Steering Committee on Disaster Risk Reduction in April 2017. (Image by IAP)

Professor Jia Gensuo, meteorologist from the CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics, was appointed on May 17 by Heide Hackmann, Executive Director of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), on behalf of the Council’s Executive Board, as a Member of the ICSU Regional Committee for Asia-Pacific (RCAP), one of the council’s three regional committees globally.

The nine-member regional committee is established and appointed by ICSU, and hosted by the Malaysian Academy of Sciences based in Kuala Lumpur. Current committee members are from the Philippines (committee chair), South Korea, China, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, New Zealand, Mongolia, and Singapore. All committee members are asked to serve in their individual capacity for three years in the first instance; Jia's proposed term of appointment is 2017-2019.

Jia is the deputy director of the CAS Key Lab of Regional Climate-Environment for East Asia. He currently leads the Earth Observation of Climate Change Group. The Group is dedicated to understanding climate, ecosystems, and land-atmosphere interactions through the use of field experiments, satellite remote sensing, airborne missions, modeling, and synthesis.

ICSU is a nongovernmental organization with a global membership of national scientific bodies (122 members, representing 142 countries) and International Scientific Unions (31 member unions). It has three Regional Offices in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, as well as offices in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The ICSU Regional Committees decide on the overall strategy, policy and program activities for the ICSU Regional Offices, guided by the ICSU Strategic Plans and other guidance the ICSU Executive Board wishes to provide. The committees are expected to promote the objectives and functions of the ICSU Regional Offices including increased participation by developing country scientists and regional scientific organizations in the implementation of the ICSU Strategic Plans.

The committees are also responsible for prioritizing key research designs and programs, which currently focus on renewable energy, ecosystems, natural disaster risks, and urban health and welfare.

Source: english.cas.cn