On the morning of Dec.19th, the Center for Integrative Conservation gathered all research group PIs and staff to hold a discussion meeting in Meeting Room 2, in order to assess the current progress and problems of the CIC, and to develop future plans.
CIC director, Lixing Gao, reviewed the development of CIC in the past 6.5 years, including CIC research groups’ research directions, major activities, and major outputs (publications, conference participation, training and capacity building, and conservation achievements).
The Center for Integrative Conservation (CIC) was established in 2012 “to bring together scientists at XTBG working on topics related to the conservation of species and ecosystems”. It “aims to combine and coordinate state-of-the-art techniques in ecology, biogeography, climate change biology, systematics, genomics, remote sensing, and spatial modeling into an effective tool for conservation”.
The CIC has had many successful achievements in the past several years, but now it needs a clear and ambitious future plan, in order to increase its influence in the region and the world.
During the meeting, the CIC participants discussed the work they have done, the significant research gaps they found during their work, and the future plans based on the CIC’s current work and progress. Proposals included new activities, potential large, collaborative, projects, and priorities for recruitment of new staff. The meeting also discussed the possible contents of new Vision and Mission statements that would focus on outputs.