Ilaria Pascucci
Welcome

I will give you a brief overview of the EXOPAG and also what you can expect in this one and the off days.
But before doing that, I want to acknowledge the tragedy that is unfolding in Los Angeles.
That, unfortunately, has also affected many of our colleagues, so you might have seen from the was this e-mail with a link.
To a number of initiatives where you can support the LA Community.
Just yesterday I received the e-mail on the right side which shows a specific initiatives to help our Community astronomical community.
So what I wanted to say is that if you have the possibility, consider donating to one of these initiatives. Thank you.
So now moving forward, first of all, what is the exopag?
So the exopag is a forum which is really driven by the community.
It's an interdisciplinary forum and its main goal is to provide input to NASA's Exoplanet Exploration program.
So here on this graph you see the exopag. You see a connection also with the executive committee was member.
I will will tell you in the next slide and then our connection with the Exoplanet Exploration Program Office, which is a JPL.
Now on the bottom of the slide, you see the three different ways in which the Community you can provide input to NASA and I will describe what these different ways are in the next slide as well.
So first of all, the executive Committee, the main goal is to organise input that you provide and also see the analysis of the different exopag groups and then report all these analysis and findings to the Astrophysics Division director.
I also want to mention that all the Members here are volunteers, so if you see them, please thank for them for their service.
I also want to mention that we have some Members who are ruling out. I'm one of them. So we are searching for new members as well As for a new chair and you can use that Q&R code. The bottom right of the slide if you want.
To nominate yourself, or if you want to nominate one of your colleagues.
To become one of the Exopag EC members, I should mention that the deadline is the end of this month.
So you still have a few weeks.
Please consider really this possibility.
We are also supported in our work.
By the Exo, peg Eason from head quarter and you can see them at the top of this slide and of course also from the accept the exoplanet Exploration Program, Office JPL, and you see the scientists and stuff who are supporting us as well.
For this meeting, we also organized ribbonds like this one that you see here, so that you can more easily identify.
Who is part of this EC as well as liaison from NASA?
You can find them with these purple ribbon. The supply and Exploration program office yellow ribbon, EXO, Explorer Orange and then the executive committee in green. If you have any questions about the exopag the exoplan, especially if you want to become a member.
Please.
Hesitate to contact any of us and we are really happy to provide you with.
Answers that that you might have to your questions.
So now let's go into the three ways in which the community can provide input to NASA. First of all, we have the science interest groups, which in short, we call things.
These are community driven groups that last for several years and they focus on specific exoplanet topics or goals.
At the moment we have two sigs, and you will hear about their activities.
Today and tomorrow.
We also have.
Study analysis groups, which we call pegs.
These are also community driven groups, but they are much shorter in in time so they get together for one to two years and then the end of those one or two years they provide.
A report which can be in the form of a paper or a workshop, whatever they think, is best for reporting those results.
Our community has been very active with Texas.
We had 17 complete sessions and we have 4.
Ongoing sex and you will hear about them today.
Finally, that's the 3rd way formal way in which you can provide input to NASA and this is through findings.
These are analysis that are carried out by the community.
They are first discussed within the EC, then they are brought to the communities through one of these semiannual meetings like the one we have today and then they are voted by the Community.
If they are approved by the community.
Then they are forwarded to the Astrophysics division leadership as input.
So they are a more formal way of providing input.
At the bottom of this page you can also find a link where you can see approved findings and again, all this information in on the Exopag website.
So let's go through some of the activities of the exopag EC.
So we organize monthly exopag EC meetings.
We organize the semiannual meetings, one always in connection with the double ES.
And then we also have cross program analysis groups meetings.
Important for the Community we report again all the findings to the astrophysics and Planetary Science Advisory committees.
The EXOPAGA has also science capitalist, and so the EC provide input to the science group list. We contribute to Exo, peg and cross peg, science analysis groups, science interest groups.
We sponsor the ExoExplorer program, which is a very important program to support the professional development of early career scientists and then more recently we have the bottom.
2 initiatives.
So first of all, we are coordinating community white papers for NASA deceda astrobiology research and exploration strategy, which in short is NASA.
There's we will hear about.
This initiative.
Later today.
But as the exopag we we have a Google sheet where we keep track of all these white papers. And then another important document is the Exopag operating procedures.
So we put together this just last year and this is important for the Community because if you are interested to start a new science interest groups and you don't know where to start.
There it is.
Explain what you have to do the different step.
Sex. If you want to know how the EC members are selected, that's also the document to go to.
Alright, so I told you that.
NASA really welcome your input, and then you might wander through these different initiative, you might wonder. Are they listening?
The answer is yes, and so in the next two slides that were put together by Eric Mamajek and Karl Stapelfeldt.
Thank you for doing that.
You will see an immediate impact of the Community input to, for instance, NASA funding or other initiatives.
On the top there where suggestions that were brought up during one of these semiannual meetings.
The ExoExplorer program itself was a suggestion. During one of these meetings, student presentation and travel funding for EXOPAG meeting that was also a suggestion. During one of these meetings.
Then there are in the bottom you can see also input from the report from the Sigma which were really important for the larger mission studies for the 2020 the KEDDELL survey and then down you can see several examples.
For the SAG reports, that's not all of it.
There is another page with many others where you can see connections, for instance to mission in Europe, like the aerial mission, you can see also support for the test follow up needs. These were all reports and findings that were achieved through the Community science analysis groups.
Now, hopefully I convinced you that it is important to be active and active exopag member.
And so these are different ways in which you can stay informed and participate. First of all, if you are not subscribed to the EXOPAG announced mailing list, I highly encourage you to do that, because this is really periodic.
E-mail that goes to this community and very informative about.
Conferences, funding proposals and all the activities that are relevant to the exoplanning community then participate if you can, in person, or if not at least online to the semiannual meeting, like this one.
And as I mentioned, propose science interest groups, science analysis group and also provide findings and suggestions.
Now, on today's meeting, you all should have the agenda.
I just want to highlight some topics that we will cover, so we will have programmatic talks and thanks to your input, we decided to keep them short.
They are still important because you want to know what's new in NASA's exoplanet exploration.
We have early career talks and thanks to your input we managed to have two slots, one today and 1:00 tomorrow.
So you will hear about exciting new science from early careers scientists. We have updates from the Community Sigs and Sigs. We will know about upcoming missions.
So you can ask yourself how you can get involved, and then we have open Mic exoplanet community forum one today and another one will be tomorrow and also tomorrow.
We will hear about the new cohort of ExoExplorer and ExoGuides, so.
Ask questions and provide suggestions.
I also want to mention that we have an ExoPAG attendee survey and I really want to encourage all of you to fill out the survey because we want to expand the community and we want to know which communities we are not reaching out to, and then we.
Also want to have a group photo. We didn't get the chance to finalize the exact location, but we will have it before lunch and.
We will step outside and go together to the other group photo.
Finally, I want to mention the logistics Guide which is.
Really important here. You can find all the information how to connect to the meeting. How to ask a question.
We have an important tool when they tool and if you want more extensive discussion, you can use the slack.
And then we have a code of conduct which will be discussed in the next presentation.
More so with that I want to thanks. Jennifer Gregory and Ray Lemos for their really invaluable help in helping.
To organise this meeting and that's all I want to say and.
Enjoy the meeting.