YSSP Fund recipients from 2011 to 2018<\/p><\/div>\n

The 27 fellows smiling at you from the photograph are all part of the IIASA global network of system thinkers thanks to the Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) Fund. The YSSP Fund<\/a> accepts donations from the IIASA community and directs the proceeds to support young scholars who are not eligible to receive a stipend from an IIASA National Member Organization.<\/p>\n

The IIASA experience has had a profound influence on the lives of previous recipients, and has brought them closer to answering some of their most pertinent research questions. J. Luke Irwin<\/a> (2018 YSSP Fund), for example, was able to explore which jobs and skills are the least automation resilient<\/a> and how policymakers and academic institutions should address future unemployment caused by automation. Another previous beneficiary of the fund, Diana Erazo (2016 YSSP Fund), looked at the transmission dynamics of Chagas disease \u2013 one of the most neglected tropical diseases in Latin America \u2013 and the most efficient strategies to contain it.<\/p>\n

Since its inception in 2011, the YSSP Fund has opened the IIASA door to 27 young researchers from Ethiopia, Thailand, India, China, Colombia, Brazil, and many other countries. All these scholars have since become an important part of the IIASA worldwide network, enriching the institute\u2019s research portfolio and planting the seeds of their newly acquired systems analysis expertise in their home countries.<\/p>\n

This bridge-building and door-opening capacity of the YSSP Fund is what inspires many members of the IIASA family to support it every year. Ever since I was appointed as development officer at IIASA in 2014, I have been privileged to accept donations from former IIASA directors, eminent researchers, and renowned experts in a variety of fields. We are all united in our belief that supporting the YSSP Fund is a great investment in future generations of researchers and an important token of trust in IIASA and its flagship capacity-building program.<\/p>\n

Many of our alumni donors are former YSSP fellows, who appreciate the impact the program has had on their careers. One of them is Petr Aven<\/a>, who was part of the first YSSP cohort in 1977 and still remembers this experience as the best time of his life. Some of our alumni, who were themselves recipients of the YSSP Fund scholarship, see it as their duty and privilege to give back. One of our most distinguished donors, Dr. Roger Levien<\/a>, former director of IIASA and the founder of the YSSP, hopes that his donations will help build a bridge between IIASA and Pardee RAND Graduate School<\/a>, of which he is an alumnus as well. The motivation behind our most recent pledge from Professors Jyoti and Kirit Parikh<\/a> is to expose young minds to systems analysis and to promote research-based policymaking.<\/p>\n

After the annual fundraising campaign is over and the IIASA network lives up to the challenge for yet another year, I find it very gratifying to be able to channel the support coming from the IIASA community to the YSSP Fund recipients. My favorite time of the year is June when I get to meet the lucky recipients of the scholarships, learn all about their plans and ambitions for the summer at IIASA, and see how motivated they are to make the most of their time at the institute.<\/p>\n

However, the real satisfaction kicks in when I see the YSSP Fund fellows thrive in their post-IIASA careers. With immense support from our alumni officer and the Communication Department, we take great pride in sharing their successes with the IIASA worldwide community. We see it as a token of gratitude to both the donors, who opened the IIASA door to them, as well as to their IIASA supervisors, who generously shared their expertise and continue to mentor them after their summer at the institute is over.<\/p>\n

Speaking of successes, Gbemi Samuel (2017 YSSP Fund), the first Nigerian to ever participate in the program has recently published a well-received article in the Journal of African Population Studies<\/em> describing her research<\/a> on estimating how many children under five could be prevented from dying if women in Nigeria used cleaner fuels to cook their family meals. Lu Liu, a 2016 YSSP Fund recipient published her first-authored paper<\/a> in Environmental Research Letters<\/em> and had a poster presentation<\/a> at the AGU Fall Meeting in Washington D.C. We are also very proud of Zhimin Mao\u2019s<\/a> (2015 YSSP Fund) post-IIASA career, starting from her IIASA Peccei Award<\/a> in 2015 and leading up to her current position at the World Bank. We can hardly wait to boast about the successes and accomplishments of our 2018 YSSP Fund fellows and hope they will stay in touch.<\/p>\n

Every donation to the YSSP Fund goes a long way. Help us close more funding gaps this summer and support the next generation of system thinkers!<\/p>\n

2018 YSSP Fund recipients: (L-R) Ekaterina Antsygina, Luke Irwin, Sara Turner, Fabio Diuana, Ankita Srivastava, Muhammad Nurariffudin, Fumi Harahap<\/p><\/div>\n

Support the 2019 YSSP Fund<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IIASA Development Officer Marzena Adamczuk talks about the impact of the YSSP Fund and the power of the IIASA network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1055,1065,1056],"tags":[587,1050,1051],"class_list":["post-4203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-iiasa-network","category-young-scientists","tag-alumni-2","tag-young-scientists","tag-yssp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/IMG_7173_best.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6UArI-15N","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iiasa.ac.at\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}