Happy summer! Hope you are all surviving the sweltering heat and taking some well deserved rest from the hectic winter activities. At ISSI, we are still working at full capacity, catching up from the pandemic hiatus: teams are visiting, workshops are being held, working groups are coming back, totally immersed in discussing, debating, moving science forward. It is a pleasure to see, finally, the teams meeting in person, but with the added bonus that remote access has become a welcome reality to allow fully inclusive participation, and the technology upgrades have made that addition possible and smooth.
As we are starting to prepare ISSI scientific program for 2024, I solicit your ideas for compelling science topics to be discussed. While the International Teams for 2023 have already been selected, on a variety of exciting scientific topics in the four disciplines that ISSI covers, we have other interesting scientific initiatives that could benefit from your input: Workshops, Forums and Working Groups. See https://www.issibern.ch/program/tools/ to learn more about what each initiative offers.
Now, we want to hear from you.
If you have a compelling science question that you feel would be perfect for a discussion in a neutral, collegial and welcoming atmosphere, such as is offered by ISSI, please do get in touch with me and/or the ISSI Directors and we will work together to identify the tools that would best fit the purpose. ISSI is here to partner with you, the scientific community we serve, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Now a couple of important announcements.
On behalf of the entire ISSI staff, we say farewell to Prof. Georges Meylan, who has left his post as Chair of the ISSI Board of Trustees at the end of June, after seven years of dedication and commitment. Prof. Meylan greatly contributed to make ISSI the strong and stable organization it is today, and for that, ISSI is very grateful.
We also offer a warm welcome to the new Chair of the ISSI Board of Trustees, Prof. Willy Benz, who has started in this new role on July 1st. Prof. Benz, Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at the University of Bern, is a world expert in exoplanet science. He is the Principal Investigator of the very successful ESA Mission CHEOPS, and is President Elect of the International Astronomical Union. This is the message that Prof. Benz offers to the ISSI scientific community, as he starts his new job at the helm of the ISSI Board of Trustees.
Antonella Nota,
Executive Director