This award will support the travel and participation of 20 US graduate students in the Cities on Volcanoes (COV) conference to be held in Colima, Mexico during November 2012. The aim of this conference is to break down the traditional divisions between volcanologists, social scientists, emergency managers, planners and engineers. The Cities on Volcanoes conference has a multidisciplinary focus with themes and sessions planned to throw together specialists and students in all of these disciplines that are involved in understanding volcano hazards and their impacts on society. As such it is a special opportunity for young scientists in disparate, yet related, disciplines to learn and to build networks as a basis for their future careers.
This conference support award will provide 20 leading graduate students from the USA with an outstanding opportunity to build and expand their professional networks across disciplines and international boundaries. This meeting is particularly appropriate for scientists at the early stages of their professional development. The student participants will meet a wide set of professionals, including emergency managers, sociologists and psychologists, planners, medical scientists, and economists. Learning to surmount cultural and linguistic differences and understanding the need for clear communication will be a feature of the meeting.
The award provided 10 US graduate students in volcanology with the opportunity to participate in a major international conference devoted to the theme of the interaction between volcanoes and society. The students were from 5 US universities and 1 New Zealand (US citizen) universities. All the student participants were required to make a conference presentation. The grant's principal contribution is the enhanced transfer of information and particularly experience between generations of researchers, made possible by funding young scientists who otherwise would have been unable to participate in the conference. The award fulfilled a purpose of educating, motivating and stimulating the next generation of United States volcanologists. The conference was an unique chance to offer wider perspectives beyond physical science to include the complex social and scientific framework of natural disaster. The students were exposed to professionals across the whole spectrum of disciplines of mitigation and management of natural disasters including planners, engineers, economists, social scientists, emergency managers, health researchers. They also met with a group of similarly motivated students who will form a support group for them thorough the early and middle stages of their careers. Public outreach was not funded directly by this grant but all participants, including our students, were given extended opportunity in participate in meetings and workshops with the public in several communities in Colima.
