Newswise — Timothy Killeen, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and an expert on Earth's upper atmosphere, has been elected president of the American Geophysical Union, the AGU announced today. Killeen will take the AGU's helm on July 1, 2006, while continuing his role as NCAR director, which he has held since July 2000.
Based in Washington, D.C., the AGU is a nonprofit scientific organization dedicated to promoting the scientific study of Earth and its environment in space. The union boasts more than 41,000 scientists and student members from 130 countries.
Killeen will serve two years on the AGU's governing council as president-elect before beginning his two-year term as president. He will remain active on the council as immediate past president for another two years, completing his six-year governing commitment in 2010.
"The AGU is a premier scientific organization dedicated to fostering scientific excellence, human capital development, and the rapid dissemination of research results across the broad range of geophysics," says Killeen. "It is a great honor to have been nominated and chosen to serve as AGU president-elect. I will work hard to uphold and augment the union's high standards of excellence in research and community service."
Killeen is co-principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center devoted to numerical modeling of space weather. He plans to continue his scientific research as a principal investigator and instrument developer for a spaceborne Doppler interferometer on NASA's TIMED spacecraft. Killeen is also currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.
Before joining NCAR, Killeen was a professor of atmospheric and space sciences at the University of Michigan, where he led the university's Space Physics Research Laboratory and served as associate vice president for research. Killeen has also presided over the AGU's Space Physics Section, and he has led various NASA and NSF committees.
Born in Cardiff, Wales, Killeen received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics from the University College London.
Gang Lu, a scientist in NCAR's High Altitude Observatory, was elected secretary for aeronomy in the AGU's Space Physics and Aeronomy Section. Aeronomy is the study of Earth's upper atmosphere.
NCAR is managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a consortium of 68 universities offering Ph.D.s in the atmospheric and related sciences. NCAR's primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.
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