43rd IAH International Congress “Groundwater and Society: 60 years of IAH”, Montpellier, France
The Early Career Hydrogeologists’ Network (ECHN) of the IAH was very happy to celebrate the success of the 43rd IAH Congress, held in Montpellier, from the 25th to the 30th of September 2016. The congress was again a great occasion to showcase the work performed by early career hydrogeologists worldwide and celebrate IAH’s 60th anniversary.
ECHN Annual General Meeting and Social Function
The traditional ECHN Social Function provided the opportunity for early careers to mingle, network and participate in a group competition where everyone had the chance to test their water tasting skills in a blind water taste competition. We take the occasion to thank the colleagues from ECHN France for the organization support in special to Sébastien Santoni and Vivien Hakoun, and the Congress organizing committee for the financial support.
ECHN Side Session
Within the celebration of IAH 60th anniversary this year, the ECHN’s special session took place under the theme “A day in the life of hydrogeologists”. This event aimed to build a bridge and create connections between young (ECHN members) and senior/experienced hydrogeologists. Senior hydrogeologists, represented by Callist Tindimugaya, Joanne Thomson, Shammy Puri, and Wendy Timms presented and shared challenges faced during the beginning of their professional lives and answered questions from the audience related to career development. The importance and demand for mentoring of ECHs became clear, as well as being enjoyable for senior hydrogeologist as well.
2015 ‘Coolest Paper Award’ celebration
During the IAH Annual General Meeting, it was announced the winner of the IAH-ECHN ‘Coolest Paper of 2015 Award’, promoted with the objective to energize the early career hydrogeologist community, encourage the discussion of new papers and share the most recent achievements in groundwater scientific knowledge. The winner of this edition was Prof. Fred Ogden, from the University of Wyoming (USA) with the paper
“A new general 1-D vadose zone flow solution method”
Ref: Ogden, F. L., W. Lai, R. C. Steinke, J. Zhu, C. A. Talbot, and J. L. Wilson (2015), A new general 1-D vadose zone flow solution method, Water Resour. Res., 51, 4282–4300.
Prof. Ogden received a free IAH membership for one year, one free book from the IAH book series and was invited to present the winning paper during the congress.
Best ECH oral and poster presentations
The congress was again a great occasion to showcase the work performed by early career hydroge
ologists worldwide. Among all the excellent contributions we are pleased to congratulate:
- Judit Déri-Takács (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada) – Best ORAL presentation
- Luis Camilo Suescún (National University of Colombia, Bogota, Colombia) – Best POSTER presentation
IAH Book Exchange
Members of the IAH Secretariat and the Early Career Hydrogeologists’ Network (ECHN) have dynamized the book exchange and to encourage a lively knowledge sharing.
The involvement of the ECHN French branch in the congress organization and the support of all the student volunteers (aka “the red jackets”) is noteworthy, reinforcing the importance of the early career members within the Association.
