This award will support the 2012 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Oceans and Human Health, the third GRC in this series. This year's Conference will feature sessions on seafood, aquaculture, natural disasters, climate change, metagenomics, microbiomes, transcriptomics, forecasting and remote sensing, changes in fecal indicator detection and emerging chemicals of concern as they relate to human health, public communications. It will also address how to communicate ocean-borne health risks and benefits to the public. Finally, it will have a short session on the Deepwater Horizon to update the conferees on what research and restoration has transpired since the April 2010 oil blowout in Macondo Canyon in the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, the future of OHH in the U.S. and Europe will be discussed. As is the case with all GRC events, this conference and seminar will assemble highly qualified experts for the several session areas, and these experts will present newly discovered information to junior scientists and graduate students in a very relaxed atmosphere.
Broader Impacts. In addition to the Intellectual Merit of formal presentations and posters by world-class experts, the GRC on OHH will provide opportunities to graduate students and postdocs for "one-on-one" discussions about OHH topics. Although initially focused largely on issues related to U.S. coastal waters, this OHH conference is expanding to include international topics, with a greater diversity of invited participants and future venues possibly alternating between the U.S. and other countries. Finally, the Conference will also endeavor to attract underrepresented conferees. Under the rules of the Gordon Research Conference, no publications may result from this or any Gordon Conference, to encourage a free exchange of cutting edge scientific ideas. Thus there will be no published abstracts or proceedings from this Conference.
The Gordon Research Conference on OCEANS & HUMAN HEALTH was held at the University of New England, Biddeford, Maine, June 3 - 8 2012. The Conference was well-attended with 87 participants (attendees list attached). The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, both U.S. and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. Of the 87 attendees, 66 voluntarily responded to a general inquiry regarding ethnicity which appears on our registration forms. Of the 66 respondents, 10% were Minorities – 3% Hispanic, 2% Asian and 5% African American. Approximately 49% of the participants at the 2012 meeting were women. The Gordon Research Seminar on OCEANS & HUMAN HEALTH was held at the University of New England, Biddeford, Maine, June 2 - 3, 2012. The Conference was well-attended with 30 participants (attendees list attached). The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, both U.S. and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. Of the 30 attendees, 23 voluntarily responded to a general inquiry regarding ethnicity which appears on our registration forms. Of the 23 respondents, 9% were Minorities – 9% Hispanic, 0% Asian and 0% African American. Approximately 73% of the participants at the 2012 meeting were women. In designing the formal speakers program, emphasis was placed on current unpublished research and discussion of the future target areas in this field. There was a conscious effort to stimulate lively discussion about the key issues in the field today. Time for formal presentations was limited in the interest of group discussions. In order that more scientists could communicate their most recent results, poster presentation time was scheduled. Attached is a copy of the formal schedule and speaker program and the poster program. In addition to these formal interactions, "free time" was scheduled to allow informal discussions. Such discussions are fostering new collaborations and joint efforts in the field. Thank you for your support of this Conference. As you know, in the interest of promoting the presentation of unpublished and frontier-breaking research, Gordon Research Conferences does not permit publication of meeting proceedings.
