As part of the transition towards a proposed merger of the two organizations, the three-day meeting will comprise a one-and-a-half day workshop involving the members of the Strategy Working Group and a group of additional experts.
This workshop will be followed by a one-and-a-half day working meeting of the group to develop a draft strategy document that will then go to the executives of both organizations, and then to the membership of both organizations for approval. If the merger is approved by a vote at the upcoming General Assembly in Taipei in October 2017, the strategy document will become the official strategy for the future, merged organization.
Later in the same week, ICSU and the ISSC will host a two-day meeting of the Transition Task Force which will work on developing a new organizational framework and structure for the proposed merged organization.
In the interests of a fully open and transparent process, all documentation pertinent to the work of the two groups and the upcoming meetings is available here.
The Strategy Working Group will kick off its meeting on Monday with a high-level panel discussion on “Setting the challenge: the future for global science.” The panel consists of Craig Calhoun, President of the Berggruen Institute, Robert Dijkgraaf, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, Nature, Flavia Schlegel, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO and Nada Al-Nashif, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences at UNESCO and Helga Nowotny, Professor Emerita of Social Studies of Science at ETH in Zurich.
The panel will be streamed on Facebook Live from 10:20 am to 11:30 am CET.