IASC Executive Secretary Appointed
Office Will Relocate to Stockholm
International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)
For further information on IASC and these changes, please go to:
http://www.iasc.no/
Dr. Volker Rachold has been appointed the new Executive Secretary of the
International Arctic Science Committee effective from 1 January 2006.
Dr. Rachold obtained his Ph.D. in geochemistry from the University of
Goettingen (Germany) in 1994 and following that worked for eleven years
with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in
Potsdam and Bremerhaven (Germany).
Dr. Rachold's research background is focused on arctic land-ocean
interactions and their links to climate change. He has extensive field
experience in the Siberian Arctic and he was the expedition leader of
eight land- and ship-based Russian-German expeditions to Siberian
rivers, the river deltas, and the coastal and shelf regions.
For the past five years, Dr. Rachold's research activities have
concentrated on arctic coastal processes with a focus on the dynamics of
permafrost coasts. As the leader of the IASC project Arctic Coastal
Dynamics (ACD) he managed an international, multidisciplinary
circum-arctic coastal research programme. Dr. Rachold's active
involvement in arctic research planning includes chairing the Arctic
Coastal Processes Working Group of the 2nd International Conference on
Arctic Research Planning (ICARP II) and the Coastal and Offshore
Permafrost Working Group of the International Permafrost Association
(IPA).
With the retirement of the present Executive Secretary of IASC, Dr. Odd
Rogne, the IASC Secretariat will move from Oslo to Stockholm at the end
of this year. The new IASC Secretariat will be hosted by the Swedish
Polar Research Secretariat with the generous support from the Swedish
Research Council. The office will be located at the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The Swedish Polar Research Secretariat
is a governmental agency with the task of planning and coordination of
Swedish research activities in the Arctic and Antarctica.