UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Guido Cervone, Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) interim director and professor of geography, of meteorology and of atmospheric science, was recently named chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting program committee.
“Being the chair of the committee is a very important service,” Cervone said. “AGU is the largest Earth and planetary science organization in the world and holds the largest conference in the world. The AGU Annual Meeting is the primary venue to present the latest and greatest science discoveries on a larger scale.”
As chair, Cervone, alongside the rest of the Annual Meeting program committee, will organize and coordinate the meeting to ensure it remains successful and that it serves the needs of the community. The meeting provides opportunities for scientists to present their science at workshops, poster sessions, town halls, oral presentations and other events. Cervone and the committee will work together to choose a venue, facilitate interaction among scientists, government officials, industry leaders and private citizens and scheduling more than 25,000 events, such as oral and poster presentations.
“Guido has been an important volunteer leader for AGU and a critical voice and advocate for the whole global Earth and space sciences community. We are looking forward to continuing our productive partnership with him in this exciting role,” said Kristen Averyt, AGU executive vice president, science.
Cervone said he aims to continue the long tradition of successful and impactful AGU annual meetings, and work with the AGU staff and the section leaders to improve the delivery of scientific results.
“I am sure that through this experience I will also learn crucial skills that will allow me to provide services to not only Penn State, but to the scientific community,” Cervone said.
Cervone’s background is in computational science and remote sensing. He is currently researching how to better predict extreme and rare events in the environment, as well as using machine learning to quantify uncertainty or errors associated with predictions. He is a faculty associate of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State. He directs the GEOvista Center and is a member of the Geoinformatics and Earth Observation Laboratory in the Department of Geography.
Cervone has been involved in AGU since 2004, primarily with the Section of Natural Hazards, where he also served as president-elect and president from 2020 to 2024. Previously, he served on the AGU Natural Hazards program committee, as chair for late-breaking sessions, and as co-chair for Human Geosciences and Natural Hazards section within the Japanese Geophysical Union for the joint meeting between the two organizations in 2019.
The 2024 annual meeting in Washington, D.C., set a record with over 30,000 attendees. Programming spanned a wide variety of topics from the latest research and discoveries to new developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning to community science and climate solutions. This year’s meeting will convene Dec. 15 through 19 in New Orleans.
“Attending the meeting every year since I was a [doctoral] student, and especially as a junior faculty, deeply impacted my career,” Cervone said. “The AGU Annual Meeting gave me a space of belonging, where I presented my results, learned about the most recent advances, exchanged ideas and, perhaps most importantly, it allowed me to build a network of colleagues that shaped my career. I hope that I will be able to help others just as much. Thinking back to when I served on the AGU Annual Meeting program committee as an assistant professor, I never would have imagined that one day I would become the chair.”
The AGU, which was established in 1919 by the National Research Council, is a community that supports over half a million professionals and advocates in the Earth and space sciences, according to their website.