Happy 5th Anniversary LAECESS !!

The Latin America Early Career Earth System Scientist Network (LAECESS) is extremely happy for its 5th Anniversary. LAECESS origins are based on two Latin American Early Career Groups: iLEAPS (integrated Land Ecosystem – Atmosphere Processes Study) and IGAC (International Global Atmospheric Chemistry). Since it’s foundation at the 2016 IGAC Conference in Breckenridge, LAECESS has been an open platform for Earth system scientists with origin and/or research interests based in Latin America to connect and share knowledge. From the beginning, the main goal was to empower Latin American early career researchers by building a collective view of strengths and sharing thoughts through blogs and forums regarding Latin American issues for everyone to participate and learn from each other.

The LAECESS network has grown over time and is proud to currently hold a total membership of 115 young scientists, including 25 in its steering committee. Over its 5 years of existence, LAECESS has organized multiple activities including presentations at conferences, webinars and periodic blog posts, where members share career advice, views on scientific topics (climate change, air quality and health, etc.), hot news (COVID-19 pandemic, Amazonian deforestation, etc.) and brief reports explaining our research to a broader audience. In July 2021, LAECESS offered its first webinar entitled: “Past, present and future of Earth System Sciences”, which had over 50 early career participants and presented senior keynote speakers from Latin America.

LAECESS seeks to serve its community also by sharing PhD/job offers, scientific papers and research questions. In order to reach out to more young scientists and stay in touch with the scientific community, LAECESS spreads the word through social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and a website.

Knowing that our planet is an integrated dynamic system, we would like to strongly encourage early career Earth scientists from different disciplines to join LAECESS. Modelling, field work, decision-making support, citizen science, policy development, etc; all are highly relevant to understand not only how our planet functions, but also our interactions with it. There are global questions that affect Latin America that we can help answer, but only being together will allow us to imagine and suggest new paths for development. In LAECESS we look forward to more years of connecting, learning and sharing... CHEERS!!