I just found out that I have been elected to serve as one of the members of the steering committee for “Commission X1: Supermassive Black Holes, Feedback and Galaxy Evolution” within the International Astronomical Union (IAU): http://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann15024/#x1.
Commission X1 is tasked with organising official IAU activities around this interdisciplinary topic, falling under two larger IAU science categories called “Divisions” (if it sounds Kafka-esque it is because it is…): “High Energy Phenomena and Fundamental Physics” and “Galaxies and Cosmology”. Our main task is to build international community awareness and scientific exchange around this theme, including the organisation of major international conferences. I guess I will find out more soon, it doesn’t become official until the next IAU General Assembly next month in Hawaii (that I am unfortunately not attending…). I was very happy to see that two of my good friends are also on the commission: Sebastian Heinz (U Wisconsin, Madison) and Marta Volonteri (IAP, France)!
