Group Photo
On September 17, 2018, the KIAA Governing Board (GB) meeting was held at KIAA. In attendance were Qihuang Gong (Peking University), Robert E. Williams (Space Telescope Science Institute), Sandra M. Faber (University of California Santa Cruz), Jiansheng Chen (Founding Director of DoA, Peking University), Anthony N. Lasenby (Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge), Xinqiang Wang (Peking University, on behalf of Xincheng Xie), Luis C. Ho (KIAA, Peking University) and Christopher Martin (Kavli Foundation). Simon D. M. White (Max Plank Institute for Astrophysics) attended the meeting via telecon. Xuebing Wu, Gregory Herczeg, Jie Yao and Shuyan Liu from KIAA also attended the meeting by the request of GB.
Qihuang Gong
After Luis C. Ho, Director of KIAA introduced the attendees, Robert E. Williams, co-chair of the GB, gave opening remarks to explain the GB meeting’s goals and the issues to be covered at the meeting, and gave a quick review of last year’s GB report. Qihuang Gong, Vice President of PKU and chair of the GB, expressed his and the university’s support for KIAA. Christopher Martin, Interim Vice President of Science Programs of Kavli Foundation, emphasized the continuous strong support from the Kavli Foundation.
Discussion
Luis C. Ho gave reports on the current state of KIAA, which summarized the achievements in various aspects that have been made during his first term as the KIAA director since 2014, and addressed the challenges for the future, including the space limitation, the unsatisfactory national ranking of PKU astronomy, and the further integration of KIAA and Department of Astronomy. The GB members were very impressed by what has been achieved at KIAA during the last 5 years, and intensively discussed the practical solutions to the challenges from the perspectives of all parties. Qihuang Gong reiterated the university’s support to KIAA to tackle these challenges, and explained the complexity of these issues from the standpoint of the university. The GB held an executive session on the renewal of the Director after his report.
Anthony N. Lasenby and Christopher Martin
Gregory Herczeg, Associate Professor of KIAA, who drafted the strategic plan together with other faculty, gave a report on the plan, which expresses the faculty’s aspirations and the proposed plans for the future. The GB members gave constructive suggestions on these plans. Xuebing Wu, Associate Director of KIAA, gave the financial report of the institute, and expressed his concern about the budget limitation. Simon White, chair of the KIAA Science Advisory Committee, gave a summary of the last SAC meeting, which was held via videcon on August 28, 2018. He conveyed his positive impressions on the progress KIAA has made during the last 5 years, and gave the SAC’s suggestions to resolve some challenges.
Sandra Faber, Robert Williams and Qihuang Gong
After this GB meeting, Sandra Faber, Professor Emerita of the University of California, Santa Cruz, will replace Robert Williams as the co-chair of the KIAA GB. All members thanked Robert Williams for his dedicated services as the GB chair during the last three years.
