Published: 08 December 2020
Dear friends of ISSI!
Dear visitors of our website!
As this unusual year is coming to an end, things are still progressing at ISSI despite the hindrances related to the pandemic! International teams keep working albeit mostly remotely and we have been reported to date more then 200 publications resulting from their work! We are working here at ISSI on setting up an online tool box to support team work and hope to have the first version ready for testing early in the new year. For the workshops we are trying an alternative procedure for the process of getting from the workshop to the corresponding ISSI Space Science Series book. In this new alternative scenario, we will kick-off the process of chapter writing via an online meeting and have the face-to-face workshop later in the process. That way we will avoid letting the pandemic delay us by too long. Conveners for three of our workshops planned for next year have agreed to give the new procedure a try. The conveners of the “Global Change in Africa” workshop, instead, have decided to hold their workshop in a mostly online to hybrid format (as travel restrictions will allow) in January. That also applies to the related Forum on “Tipping Points in the Earth Climate” organized together with ESA. The “Global Change in Africa” workshop will the first in our new workshop line entitled “Global Change and its Societal Impact”. ISSI is extremely proud to start this new workshop series early next year. We hope for valuable contributions to the scientific debate on the anthropogenic changes to our planet.
The Game Changer Missions Seminar Series continues to go strong with 150-250 visitors per event and will be finishing the astronomy mission seminar talks by Christmas. In the new year, we will be starting a series of seminar talks on Earth Observation missions that will take us into March. The talks to date have all been recorded and are available for view on our website.
Unfortunately, two of our staff Alexandra Lehmann and Saliba F. Saliba will leave ISSI by the end of the year, moving on to new challenges in their lives. But we have already found wonderful new colleagues to replace them, Yemisi Momoh as secretary and Willi Wäfler as IT manager and engineer. While we are sad to see Alexandra and Saliba leave after all those years – a big Thank You to both of them for their great service – we are looking forward to working with Yemisi and Willi. Please find short portraits of them on the web site.
We at ISSI wish all of you a peaceful and healthy Christmas time! Our thoughts continue to be with those severely hit by the pandemic!
All the best
Tilman Spohn
ISSI executive director
