IRIS Welcomes New Member Institutions

A new Voting Member and two new Foreign Affiliates join IRIS.

At its meeting on May 1-2, the Board of Directors approved applications to join IRIS from the University of Maryland, the University of Costa Rica, and the University of Tokyo.

• The University of Maryland, IRIS's 115th Voting Member, has had a strong Earth sciences research program for many years and, with faculty members Laurent Montesi since 2007 and Ved Lekic since 2011, now includes a significant focus in tectonophysics and seismological research.
• The University of Costa Rica joins Universidad Nacional Autonoma as the second IRIS Foreign Affiliate from Costa Rica. As host of the Central America Seismic Center, UCR has been a leader in regional data exchange for decades and representative Mauricio Mora has worked closely with the IRIS International Development Seismology program in recent years.
• The University of Tokyo, represented by Nozomu Takeuchi of the the Earthquake Research Institute, has been world renowned in seismology for nearly a century, and is IRIS's first Foreign Affiliate in Japan.

IRIS now has 116 Foreign Affiliates which, for the first time, exceeds the number of voting IRIS Member Institutions in the U.S.