Ocean Sciences 2016: New Orleans

Louise Biddle

UEA

The AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2016 was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the last week of February. This was my first US conference, and it was on a scale that I haven’t seen before! The poster hall was enormous – over 3000 poster boards – and there were at least 15 sessions running concurrently throughout the week. Later in the week I would be presenting my PhD work in the “High Latitude Environments: Ice-Ocean Interactions and Circulation around the Antarctic Margins” session, so I had time to enjoy the other sessions and learn about other exciting oceanographic research being undertaken in the Southern Ocean.

There were several plenary talks throughout the week, and an awards session including inspiring talks from Fiamma Straneo and Walter Munk reminiscing on his days as an “early career scientist” as he presented the Munk award to his old friend, Carl Wunsch! The poster sessions provided lots of time and opportunity to chat to other scientists in similar fields, and resulted in interesting discussions. My oral presentation on Thursday went smoothly and I made new contacts for future collaborations, as well as lots of new ideas to pursue! The week was incredibly useful for developing ideas for postdoctoral research and I’m very grateful to the Challenger Society for supporting me to attend the conference.

 Profile of Louise Biddle:
Louise is a 4th year PhD student at the University of East Anglia, working with supervisors Karen Heywood, Jan Kaiser and Adrian Jenkins (at BAS) on improving the ways we identify glacial meltwater in the Amundsen Sea. Throughout her PhD Louise has been involved in piloting Seagliders around the world and is enthusiastic in public engagement. Now at the end of her PhD, she hopes to continue in Antarctic oceanographic research as well as strengthening her outreach activities.

Twitter feed:
A week filled with lots of talks, exciting discussions and a successful oral presentation: @loubiddle at #OSM16, supported by @challengersoc