European Geosciences Unions General Assembly 2015- Vienna, Austria
Craig Smeaton
University of St-Andrews

Profile
I am a 2nd year PhD student working with Dr William Austin and Dr Althea Davies on the long term storage of particulate carbon in Scottish coastal waters. The work focuses on quantifying the carbon held within the sediment of Scottish sea lochs (fjords) and determining the long term drivers of carbon transfer from the terrestrial to the marine environment.Twitter Post (140 Characters)
4870 talks and 8489 posters in 5 days, EGU 2015 was an amazing experience, thanks for the help @challengersoc.Blog – Post
I would like to thank the Challenger Society for a travel award enabling me to attend EGU 2015 in Vienna. The conference took place between the 12th and 17th of April, the conference itself is on a different scale to anything else I have previously experienced with 11837 attendees from 108 countries. In truth at first the experience in intimating but that quickly wears off once you attend your first session.With 577 different sessions there was massive choice of talks on offer; on the whole I stuck to the biogeoscinece, ocean and sedimentology sessions. I also attended climate and planetary science sessions these session are not related to my work but the talks were extremely interesting especially the session on the Rosetta mission.
My talk “A Carbon Inventory for a Scottish Sea Loch” took place on Tuesday morning; it was part of the Biogeosciences of the Coastal and Shelf Seas session. The talk went down well and I got some useful input from the audience.
During the week I went to a number of academic/social events such as the IODP Town Hall Meeting and the Geological Society of London reception. Here I met friends and made contacts that I hope will be useful in my future research.
Overall, the conference was a great experience the vast amount of different science present was inspiring. Thank you to the Challenger Society for helping to make it happen.
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Marine Data Management, Governance and the MEDIN toolset
The Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) and OceanWise are delighted to invite you to attend our popular free online training workshop: ‘Marine Data Management, Governance and the MEDIN toolset’ on the 19th – 23rd of May 2025.
Workshop on the contribution of UK Arctic Ocean science to the International Polar Year 32/33
12:00 11th June – 16:00 12th June 2025: NOC Southampton (In-person with online option): Registration deadline 16th May
REGISTER HERE
Pre-meeting questionnaire (open to all)
The purpose of this workshop is for the UK Ocean Science community to discuss and then draft a prospectus document outlining the priority Arctic research questions the community would like to address during the run up to, throughout and beyond the International Polar Year 32/33. Additionally, to identify what unique strengths and technologies the UK has to help fill these knowledge gaps.
The second day of the workshop will be dedicated to writing groups, one for each of the priority research questions identified - from both the pre-meeting questionnaire (HERE) and day one discussion. By the end of the meeting, each group will have produced draft text and sourced supporting figures for the prospectus.
Post meeting, the draft will be opened for comments and suggestions from everyone, regardless of whether they were able to attend the workshop or not. It will then be shared with UK funders (UKRI, FCDO, DSIT, ARIA) and potential international programmes with whom we would like to collaborate (e.g. Arctic 2050, Norway). It will form a basis from which wider integration with terrestrial, atmospheric and cryosphere communities can be built, e.g. at the UK Arctic Science Meeting in September in Northumbria.
To ensure balanced community and ECR representation, and to ensure that the size of the writing groups is efficient and effective, if the number of registrations from individual institutes becomes overwhelming, we may contact individuals or teams and ask that each institute selects a smaller number of individuals to attend in-person. Please wait for confirmation of in-person attendance before finalising travel arrangements.
The workshop will be open to hybrid attendance and contributions on both days.
Challenger Society Council Position Vacancy
The Challenger Society for Marine Science (CSMS) are pleased to announce an exciting opportunity to support the next generation of ocean scientists and innovators. CSMS are looking for a new Council member to fill the Student Travel Awards and Stepping Stones Portfolio. The successful applicant will administer the travel and research grants available for Early Career Researchers.
The role involves:
- Receiving applications for the two schemes and responding to applicant inquiries
- Soliciting and compiling input from the rest of the Council for assessing the applications
- Communicating with successful and unsuccessful applicants for the two schemes
- Working with the Honorary Treasurer on allocating funds to successful applicants
- Following up with award winners on their reporting requirements
- Attending Council meetings four times a year (in person or online) and contributing to discussions and decision making for CSMS
The usual term for Council members is three years.
For more information about the CSMS Council, please follow this link: https://www.challenger-society.org.uk/The_Council
For more information about our Early Career Researcher grants and awards, please follow this link:
https://www.challenger-society.org.uk/Stepping_Stones
and
https://www.challenger-society.org.uk/Travel_awards
If you are interested in applying or have any questions regarding the role, please contact kathen@bas.ac.uk