Dear members and friends of the IRIS community:
UNAVCO and IRIS leadership have spent the past 12 months exploring how to support our current core missions and explore new opportunities for cross-disciplinary science. We believe that a new, merged organization will leverage our current strengths to enable exciting innovations in our core research areas and in new interdisciplinary directions. Further, this merger will position us to support the geophysics community after the current GAGE and SAGE facility awards end in 2023, when the National Science Foundation indicates it will support a single follow-on geophysical facility for post-2023 operations.
Yesterday the UNAVCO and IRIS Boards of Directors voted unanimously to accept merger terms and bylaws for a future broad geophysics consortium. This vote prepares the way for a vote of the consortium members, which we expect will take place late fall, 2020.
Sincerely,
Bob Woodward
IRIS President