AOGS General Election 2023-PS President Mission Statement

Dr. Zhonghua YAO
Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

AOGS is a highly international society, which encourages and promotes vital communications
between scientists within the Asia-Oceania region and beyond. Planetary explorations in AsiaOceania countries are seeking chances for rapid development and urging closer international
communications between planetary scientists across the world, in achieving breakthroughs ofgreat scientific importance while making the most out of expensive planetary exploration
projects.

Ever since obtaining my PhD from Peking University (China), I have been working in different
countries with diverse cultural background, which underpinned my realization of theimportance of communications in the world of science. After a successful 3-year postdoctoral
research in UCL (UK), I became an independent researcher funded by the Marie-Curie
COFUND fellowship for another 3-year research in Liege (Belgium), and then joined Chinese
Academy of Sciences to lead a research group of my own. I have been personally taking a very
active engagement in exchanging information and ideas. Specifically, I have participated theorganization of more than 10 international meeting sessions like AOGS, AGU, EGU etc., andedited issues for scientific journals, including the AOGS journal Geoscience Letters on the topic
about planetary magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling processes. Therefore, I have always
kept a close and strong connection with AOGS. In addition to the aforementioned roles, I am
currently also serving the PS section as a secretary and an award committee member of theAOGS. In this position, I have often nominated suitable candidates for AOGS awards, and I amvery honored to have received the AOGS Kamide Lecture Award myself. It has always been myutmost passion to support all AOGS activities, and I have a broad international vision to leadthe AOGS PS section to further maintain its present service as well as to tackle futurechallenges.

If I could have the opportunity to serve as the new president of the AOGS PS section, I would
like to promote the following actions to strengthen the section.

•Organize tailored sessions for discussion of potential international collaborations onplanetary space missions. The Asian countries are becoming increasingly active inplanetary explorations, and this will create huge opportunities for multinational
collaborations between these new players as well as collaborations with the US andEuropean countries. These proposed sessions will provide a crucial platform inbringing international research groups and funding bodies more closely related for theparticular missions in discussion.

•Integrate the small workshops/meetings in different countries with similar topics into
AOGS sessions. AOGS PS section may also be responsible for coordinating with therelevant organizations in different countries to jointly launch international workshops
on specific topics, for example the Mars research workshop amongst the recently
launched missions by different countries.

•Invite highly influential speakers, such as mission PIs, to attract more audiences. I aim
to also organize the selection of abstracts that could potentially gain a high publicattention and highlight these talks during the AOGS meetings in aid of adding
information and diversities into the meeting sessions.