SY Newsletter

Acknowledging Unusual Times
With any new administration, there is always some churn, but are aware that the current transition is proving more turbulent and chaotic. Now more than ever, it is crucial to continue fostering our community and support each other through the churn that many are experiencing. To that end, the AGU Science and Society Section leadership are committed to supporting the needs of our members, and continue providing a space that encourages and promotes societally relevant geosciences work. We want to spotlight our members who are actively working at the intersection of Science and Society. Your efforts in connecting science and societal needs are even more valuable during these turbulent times, so please reach out to us if you would like to be featured in our newsletters. We also encourage you to nominate teams for our SY team award. Finally, we will continue to highlight useful resources in future newsletters, and in our LinkedIn group so please join our group on LinkedIn for more updates.

Affiliation: Sandia National Labs

Title: Principal Member of Technical Staff

SY Experiences: My foray into science and society began during my undergraduate studies. I was studying distribution of mercury in the leaves and soils of the Shenandoah mountains and had discovered there were significant differences between the western and eastern side of the mountains. After a presentation, a colleague asked me if I was planning to share these findings with local communities, which hadn’t been on my radar. This question ended up being a watershed moment for me. Since then, I actively incorporate considerations for possible use/users of my scientific findings as I design the research. This has resulted in my research products shifting from only peer-reviewed research to consider technical reports and release of open-source software to small-group community presentations. Over the years, however, I have observed a mismatch in timelines and metrics between scientific and societal discourses. For example, the latter might want things faster than the former is able to provide while the former might not necessarily recognize the effort or need for engaging with the latter. So how could we create better structures and processes to better realize the potential between science and society? As the president-elect for our section, I am excited to continue probing into these important questions with our community (AGU and beyond).

Help foster the science and society community at AGU! Fill out this form to volunteer and nominate colleagues to become more involved in SY section activities and leadership. Check out our list of current SY volunteers to get a sense of the various positions!

We can’t believe that another AGU Annual Meeting has come and gone (and that we are already planning for AGU25!). A huge thank you to all the session conveners, Outstanding Student Presentation Award judges, presenters, and everyone else who helped AGU24 Annual Meeting be a success. It is rewarding to see our Science and Society (SY) community continue to grow and come together to share the progress we’ve made, and some of the challenges we’ve faced, over the last year. As usual, we look forward to continuing these conversations as a section throughout 2025. See below for a couple highlights from our business meeting and the Art and Science plenary.

• SY Luncheon

At the Science and Society luncheon at AGU in December, SY leadership shared many highlights from this past year. If you missed them or want to see them again, flip through our slideshow.

• Art and Science Plenary Recap - “What’s next for corals?”

The theme of this year’s art and science plenary was “What’s next for corals?” and featured an interdisciplinary dialogue between distinguished NOAA coral reef ecologist, Derek Manzello, and an acclaimed artist and ocean advocate, Courtney Mattison, who offered insights into the impacts of climate change on coral ecosystems.The discussion was moderated by Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer, artist, activist, podcaster, and story strategist with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

The plenary highlighted the transformative power of the arts in engaging the public and shining a light on the collaborative benefits between the arts and sciences. Our goals are to elevate awareness of climate change impacts on coral reefs; to inform about coral conservation; to inspire active participation in broader environmental conversations; and to explore innovative pathways to solutions.

AGU’s SY Section is excited to announce the opening of nominations for our section’s team-based honor! Producing scientific knowledge for societal benefit often means advancing scientific understanding as a collaborative activity between researchers and those the research aims to serve (e.g., practitioners, communities, and other producers and users of scientific knowledge and technology). The “Science for Society Team Award” recognizes successful efforts and advances at the interface of science and society, including but not limited to the use of co-production models, jointly produced research, research-to-operations, and partnerships to build scientific capacity. This award is unique to AGU in that it is designed to recognize a team of researchers and their partners, with the goal of jointly addressing societal needs. New this year, we welcome both peer and self-nominations.

Many thanks to the members of our outgoing 2024 Executive Committee who are rotating off! We are incredibly grateful for your hard work and dedication to representing the interests of our members both at and outside of the Annual Meeting! 

Help foster the science and society community at AGU! Fill out this form to volunteer and nominate colleagues to become more involved in SY section activities and leadership. Check out our list of current SY volunteers to get a sense of the various positions!

Name: Dabo Guan

Affiliation: Tsinghua University and University College London (UCL)

Title: Professor

Tell us about your science and society experiences: I specialise in environmental economics for international climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, scenario analysis on environmental impacts, water resources accounting and management, input-output modelling and their applications in both developed and developing countries. I serve as the Chief Scientist in coordinating the China-EU Flagship Cooperation Programme on Climate Change and Biodiversity. I was a Lead Author for the IPCC AR5. I was the Highly Cited Researcher for 2018-2023, top thousand climate academics. I have authored over 300+ publications, including 9 articles published in Nature, and 60+ in Nature Research Journals, and PNAS. I received the PNAS Cozzarelli Prize 2014, the Leontief Prize 3 times and the Philip Leverhulme Prize. My research received 2018, 2019 and 2020 Altimetric Top 100 awards.