This award will partially support the 6th Graduate Climate Conference at the University of Washington from October 26-28, 2012. Specifically, the award will be used to support the travel, meals and lodging costs for 30 US graduate students to participate in the conference.
The Graduate Climate Conference is an annual event that provides students with a discussion forum on all topics of climate change research - including atmospheric, biological, earth and ocean sciences - and allows the students to see how their own research fits into this breadth of climate research activities. The workshop provides a relaxed environment for interactions with individuals at a similar early career stage and the opportunity to develop a network of collaborative, interdisciplinary relationships that will prove beneficial throughout their careers.
The 6th Graduate Climate Conference took place over 3 days, 26-28 October 2012, at the Pack Forest Conference Center in Eatonville, WA at the base of Mount Rainier. This year’s conference brought together 83 graduate students from 37 different academic institutions across 19 US states and three foreign countries. No NSF money was spent on the nine students attending from institutions outside the US. Selection for attendance was competitive, with a record 214 applicants, and participants were selected by a multi-disciplinary graduate student abstract committee to make the science program as strong and diverse as possible. The attendees represented a wide array of research interests from inferring past changes in atmospheric circulation from records in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core, to modeling the response of the hydrologic cycle to global warming, to analyzing how US renewable energy policies can drive green innovation. The three-day conference included opportunities for each participant to formally present their research in an oral or poster session as well as opportunities to informally discuss research and network with colleagues during cafeteria-style meals, over social breaks and during group hikes and canoe trips at the conclusion of the conference. Our keynote speaker was Professor Eric Steig of the University of Washington, who addressed issues of career development and work-life balance relevant to young scientists. The scientific program consisted of 7 talk sessions (generally an hour and a half long) and 3 mixed-discipline poster sessions. The conference was single-session format and so all attendees saw each talk and attendees were roughly split between speakers and poster presenters. The program was as follows: Friday: Cryosphere, Water and Climate, Poster Session A, Keynote Address. Saturday: Carbon Cycle, Poster Session B, Society and Climate, Climate Dynamics, Poster Session C. Sunday: Ocean Change, Terrestrial Impacts. The full conference program, including links to the abstracts of all presenters in each session can be found at: www.atmos.uw.edu/gcc/Program.html. NSF support allowed us to provide travel scholarships to 36 of the 50 participants who traveled to the conference from outside the University of Washington. This included awarding travel scholarships to all students selected to give oral presentations, as well as all students who indicated in their application that they required a scholarship to be able to attend. Many participants mentioned in their end-of-conference feedback forms that they would not have been able to participate without having received a travel scholarship. We appreciate the continued support of NSF in enabling us to put on a high quality conference that fosters interdisciplinary learning and connections among the next generation of climate scientists.
