Date: Dec 15th, 2006
Author: CAS NEWS
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After having served a three-year term from 2003 to 2006, CAS Vice President CHEN Zhu was elected co-chair of the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) again at its Triennial Conference and General Assembly held from Dec. 1 to 5 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.
Headquartered in Trieste, Italy, IAP is a global network of the world's science academies. Its primary goal is to help member academies work together to advise citizens and public officials on the scientific aspects of critical global issues. IAP is particularly interested in assisting young and small academies achieve these goals and, through the communication links and networks created by IAP activities, all academies will be able to raise both their public profile among citizens and their influence among policy makers.
According to its Statute, IAP has two co-chairpersons, one from a developing country and the other from the developed world, and one of them may be re-elected once. Prof. Chen will take charge of the organization in a three-year term commencing 2007 together with Prof. Howard Alper, former president of the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada.
In his speech at the opening ceremony of the meeting, Chen drove attention to the significance of reaching beyond scientific specializations seeing that 'cross-disciplines are a feature of the unity of science.' He stressed that science should overcome the limits of time, geographic distance and cultural differences so as to advance human welfare through the sharing of mutual knowledge.
