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COAA 2014 AGU Banquet

December 2014 - COAA hosted its annual AGU banquet on December 18, 2014 at San Francisco, CA. More than 115 participants around the world attended this banquet, including many new COAA members, who joined COAA onsite of the banquet. The event began with a reception by Dr. Jin Huang (COAA President-elect) with a lot of wines followed by a banquet full of delicious foods partially sponsored by COAA.

As the recipients of COAA's Honorary Fellow of 2014, Profs. Peter Webster of Georgia Tech and Guoxiong Wu of Chinese Academy of Science both gave stimulating and enlightening speeches. Prof. Webster told the story about his serendipity with his Chinese students, many of whom became outstanding scientists after graduation, including Drs. Bill Lau (Univ. of Maryland; former COAA president), Chidong Zhang (Univ. of Miami) and Song Yang (Sun Yet-sen Univ. and former COAA President). Prof. Guoxiong Wu encouraged the young scientists to work more diligently and more determined by portraiting the hard time in pursuing their career goals. Following their speeches, many other Chinese AGU awardees and prestigious Chinese scholars gave brief remarks, including Dr. Bill Lau (AGU Atmospheric Science Section president; AGU fellow). Profs. Kuo-nan Liao (UCLA; AGU fellow), Zhanqing Li (Univ. of Maryland; former COAA president; AGU 2014 fellow and Yoram Koffman awardee), Qiang Fu (Univ. of Washington; AGU 2014 fellow), Song Yang, Yongyun Hu (Peking Univ.) among many others. In addition to encouragement of young scientists working in the Earth Science field, the speakers also highly acknowledged COAA's contribu'ion on uniting Chinese scholars around the world and enhancing Chinese visibility in this field. Drs. Jin Huang and Jonathan Jiang (JPL; COAA Southern CA chapter President) reported the past year's activities COAA hoseed or participated, and expressed COAA board's gragitude to continuous support from COAA members and corporative sponsors (including ERT, IMSG, and CyberData). In this event, COAA also received generous personal donations from Profs. Zhanqing Li ($1000), Qiang Fu ($100) and Zhaoxia Pu ($100). Any COAA member donating over $100 becomes lifetime a COAA member.

The gathering strengthened friendships among the COAA members, reunited old and new friends, and showcased the collective power of Chinese professionals in our fields.