Association of Polar Early Career Scientists

 

ASSW2016 logo

APECS organized several events at the Arctic Summit Science Week (ASSW) 2016 in Fairbanks, Alaska (12 - 18 March 2016)

  • a half-day Early Career Arctic Policy Workshop on Monday, March 14 from 9:00 - 12:30 addressing the global effort to use best-available science in the development of Arctic policy.
  • an in-person meeting of the APECS Executive Committee 2015-2016 on 10 - 11 March

APECS Workshop at the ASSW 2016

APECS hosted an Early Career Arctic Policy Workshop on Monday, March 14 during Arctic Science Summit Week in Fairbanks, Alaska. This half-day workshop began with a keynote presentation from Bradley Moran, dean of the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. Following, participants heard five short presentations addressing the global effort to use best-available science in the development of Arctic policy from our workshop’s mentors: Carolina Behe, Terry Chapin, Henry Huntington, Amy Lovecraft, and Peter Winsor. Following the talks, participants broke into smaller, mentor-led groups to discuss strategies for incorporating scientific knowledge into impactful Arctic policy. The workshop had great attendance, with 34 participants from a range of countries and different career stages.

ASSW2016 behegroupBradley Moran spoke to the group about some of his experiences working in the policy world, including an opportunity to share Fukushima radiation data with the White House during his time serving as the assistant director of ocean sciences in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Carolina Behe’s small group discussion focused on understanding indigenous knowledge, and the importance of creating policies and management plans that incorporate both indigenous knowledge and scientific data. Peter Winsor and Henry Huntington led a joint small group discussion. Their group talked about relevant community based science, the importance of communicating science, and how to get into private consulting work. Terry Chapin’s small group discussed the value of interdisciplinary work, and the difference between working as a specialist in an interdisciplinary group versus being a solo interdisciplinary researcher. Amy Lovecraft’s group discussed ways to translate our work and research into practice, and the value of personal marketing.

Presentation Titles:

  • Keynote: Bradley Moran, Perspectives on ocean science, policy and lesson learned
  • Henry Huntington, Research, observations and outreach, or the production of science vs. the consumption of science
  • Amy Lovecraft, Scenarios as social learning: Community-scale anticipation of healthy sustainable communities in Arctic Alaska
  • Carolina Behe, Indigenous knowledge and monitoring: Applying a food security lens and co-production of knowledge approach
  • Peter Winsor, Managing science projects across the world with a keen eye to industry and the private sector
  • Terry Chapin, Interdisciplinarity: When, if ever, is the right time to embrace it?

ASSW2016 biggroup

 

APECS Excom in-person meeting (10-11 March)

2015 16 Excom

This year the annual APECS Excom meeting was held in Fairbanks, Alaska, immediately prior to the Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW). We had two very productive days of discussions and we were joined by Alex, one of the National Committee coordinators, for part of these.

The last few months have seen a number of changes as a result of the organizational review recommendations and the subsequent publication of our 5-year strategic plan. During the first part of the meeting we reviewed the changes to the council structure, which we implemented in autumn. Whilst we felt that the new project group structure was working well, we recognized the need for improved reporting so that experiences and advice can be passed on to future project group members. We also prioritized a number of documents, resources and pages on the website to be updated in the coming months.

The individual National Committees do a tremendous amount of work that is often not recognized outwith the local country. We discussed ways to improve the sharing of updates and experiences between NCs and develop ‘how to’ guides for organizing the most common types of NC events.

Other topics on the agenda included the budget and renewal of MoUs with a few of our partner organizations. As a final topic we noted that APECS will be 10 years old next year and so we discussed ways in which we could mark this momentous occasion. We plan to organize events at several conferences so keep an eye out for ways to get involved!

ASSW began straight after our meeting and this gave us an unrivalled opportunity to talk in-person to many of our Arctic-orientated partners, attend their meetings and spread the word about APECS.

Contact APECS

APECS International Directorate
UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Huginbakken 14
9019 Tromsø
Norway
Email: info(at)apecs.is

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