AOGS Election of Office Bearers - 2012 to 2014

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Candidate of:
President

Kenji Satake (CV)
Professor
Earthquake Research Institute, The University of Tokyo

Mission Statement

In 2002, at National Central University in Taiwan, I attended a brain storming discussion with Ian Axford, Wing Ip, Yosuke Kamide, D.K. Lee and others to create a new geoscience society, similar to AGU or EGU, in Asia and Oceania region. We discussed about vision, designed the AOGS, and set up three goals: (1) to organize the first meeting; (2) to hold meetings annually; and (3) to create an electronic journal for the society. It seemed to me a dream or thoughtless to make such a society from nothing. Nevertheless, we succeeded to hold the first meeting in 2004 in Singapore, and have kept the annual meetings. I served the first Secretary General from 2004 through 2006, and contributed drafting the constitution. As one of the founding members of AOGS, I am so proud to see the quantity and quality of recent AOGS meeting.

The goal of the AOGS is to cooperate and promote discussion on studies of the Earth and its environment, as well as the planetary and space sciences. As a candidate of President, I would propose two new strategies: journal and outreach activity. As stated above, creating a journal was our 3rd step. While we have published paper monograph volume, Advances in Geosciences (ADGEO), we will need to start an electronic journal(s). Crating journals is not an easy task. One way would be to collaborate existing journals in such way that AOGS members have free access through AOGS portal site. Outreach activity, or feedback of our research result to society, is closely related to my own research: earthquake and tsunami. The Asia and Oceania region suffers from many natural hazards. Several months after the first AOGS meeting, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami took more than 230,000 lives. Recently, great earthquake and tsunami again took many lives in Japan. Climate change and sustainability are also important global issues related to geosciences, including the Asia and Oceania region. In addition to carrying out scientific research, outreach activity of our research results would be an important goal for the AOGS.