The Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) 2011 held last March in Seoul, Republic of Korea, exceeded expectations with 334 registered participants from over twenty countries. The week in the south Korean capital combined business meetings, a science symposium, side-meetings and workshops. It created excellent opportunities to strengthen international networks and collaboration. A total of 208 abstract were submitted for the science symposium: The Arctic: New Frontier for Global Science of which 157 were presented in Seoul. With 92 talks and 65 posters there was a good balance in science presentations.
Early Career Awards
Early career scientists were well represented and awards for best poster and talk in this category were presented by the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) and IASC. The award for the best oral presentation went to Gijs de Boer from Lawrence Livermore Labs, in Berkeley, California, USA for his presentation entitled “The Arctic Atmosphere in CCSM4: Evaluation of key variables”. The decision on the best poster was so difficult that the selection committee decided to present two awards. One went to Kazutoshi Sato from Hirosaki University, Japan for his presentation entitled “Change in cloud-base height over the ice-free Arctic Ocean during autumn” and the other to Hye Min Kim from the Korea Polar Research Institute for her presentation on “Microbial Diversity of the Active Layer Soil from the Canadian High Arctic”. All awardees will receive free registration for the next ASSW Science Symposium in Krakow.