University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) Senior Research Scientist Jamie Austin has been named the next chair of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Forum.

According to the official IODP website, the IODP Forum is “a venue for exchanging ideas and views on the scientific progress of the International Ocean Discovery Program. The Forum is the custodian of the Science Plan and provides advice to IODP Facility Boards on Platform Provider activity.”

The IOPD Forum meets annually. The 2015 meeting takes place July 8-10 in Canberra, Australia, hosted by Dr. Neville Exon, Program Scientist, Australia and New Zealand IODP Consortium (ANZIC).

Austin’s two-year term as IODP Forum chair begins on Oct. 1, 2015, and continues through Sept. 30, 2017. Part of his duties will be to update the list of selected publications which, according to the IODP website, contains representative articles appearing in the journals Science, Nature, and Nature Geoscience based on scientific ocean drilling program expeditions beginning in 2003.