The First Policy Making Council Meeting of 2023

The first Policy Making Council meeting of 2023 took place on January 10th. Members of the council from different countries and different disciplines gathered together on an online forum to contemplate and discuss the previous year's achievements and obstacles and make decisions for the year ahead. After a few welcoming words by the USERN founder Prof. Nima Rezaei, all participants presented themselves briefly in a tour de table. There followed a presentation by Nima Rezaei who described the governance structure of USERN. In its seven years of existence as a non-governmental and international organization, USERN always had one single but important message "science without borders". Which was a recurring theme throughout the meeting influencing every decision. In light of that Jonathan Howard one of the council members in attendance asked the provoking question of why do we want to expand indefinitely?

To answer his question USERN president Tommaso Dorigo mentioned that "The world functions with politics, and scientists have a limited impact on the world's policies. People create organizations to gather around in a community so their words could have a bit more weight. If we as scientists create this union, we can move towards a greater good and more progress in science."

Council members further discussed matters such as USERN affiliation and establishment of USERN offices and with that the meeting was concluded.

USERN Press Office