Those of you who are members of the IAU should have received a few days ago an email from the IAU General Secretary about the forthcoming elections of the Organising Committees (OC) of the IAU Working Groups (WGs). As a rule, such WGs have a finite lifetime, and they need to be renewed every three years to continue to exist. I have already submitted a request to the President of IAU Division G, Stars and Stellar Physics, to which the Working Group on Ap & Related Stars (ApWG) belongs, for extension of this WG for the next IAU triennium (2021–2024). Part of the requirements for such an extension is the appointment of a new OC, through an election process, in line with the information recently distributed by the IAU General Secretary.
As a prerequisite to such an election, we need to have an up-to-date list of the members of the IAU WG. For unknown reasons, the ApWG membership list maintained by the IAU (https://www.iau.org/science/scientific_bodies/working_groups/105/members/) has become corrupted. In particular, some of the most active members of the WG, including some current members of the OC, no longer feature in this list. As a first step towards correcting this, I have contacted all the ApN subscribers who do not appear in the ApWG membership list maintained by the IAU, to invite them to become (again) members of the ApWG. If they are willing to do so, I shall ask the IAU to add their name to the membership list.
In addition, there must also be a number of colleagues who are active in our field of research, but who until now are neither subscribed to the ApN nor members of the IAU ApWG. Should you know such people, could you kindly either ask them to contact me (gmathys@eso.org) or bring them to my attention, so that I can send them an invitation to become WG members? Please take action without delay: because of the timeline for the subsequent OC election process, the membership list needs to be updated very soon. Accordingly, I would like to be able to integrate all new members by Friday, March 5, at the latest.
Once the WG membership situation is sorted out, we shall proceed with a call for candidates for the OC elections. May I kindly suggest that you give some thought at the possibility of contributing in such a way to the development of our field of research? The workload involved is reasonably light but the task is rewarding as one has the opportunity to influence the definition of directions of research. I would like particularly to encourage younger members of our community to consider serving, to bring new dynamics to our activities. More details will be given in a future announcement.
As a final point, I would welcome some help for the organisation of the forthcoming OC elections. Should you be willing to lend a hand, please kindly let me know at your soonest convenience.
Gautier Mathys
Chair, IAU Working Group on Ap & Related Stars