The Gordon Research Seminar on Marine Microbes is a unique forum for graduate students, post-docs, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education to present and exchange new data and cutting edge ideas.
The 2022 Marine Microbes GRS will focus on research at the nexus of approaches to study marine microbes. We seek research that bridges across methods, experimental systems, and scales to form a more holistic understanding of the ocean microbiome.
Like many branches of science, the principal challenges and questions for microbial oceanography are decidedly interdisciplinary. We often use a combination of methods at discrete levels but with the aim of developing a continuous understanding of our systems. Collaborative science utilizing a range of approaches is essential to creating a comprehensive conception of the ocean system, and as our field advances, it is increasingly important to integrate between developments in the laboratory, field, theory, and computation. A defining feature of our field is that we absolutely require integrative study given the nature of the microbe-mediated processes at the microscale (and smaller) and their global consequences. These questions require us to bridge the divides between objects and modes of study, as well as between scales and between microbes and their environment. Only through these connections can we elucidate the complex dynamics of interest. But how exactly do we go about the exciting and challenging work of connecting these insights?
At the 2022 GRS, we aim to bring together our community of early career marine microbiologists into a space that fosters open discussion. This seminar enables our early-career members to connect, showcase unpublished research, exchange ideas, and share our views for the future of this field. This year, we will challenge our participants to examine the appropriate ways to integrate findings between scales, systems, methods, and frameworks. Whether it is testing theories in situ, conducting laboratory experiments to inform numerical models, comparing sedimentary and pelagic ecosystems, or using computational resources to infer future ocean changes from present-day observations, our focus will be on the fundamental interconnectedness of microbial oceanography. In addition to their research presentations, we invite our graduate students and postdocs to share their perspectives on what connections at the interface of two methods, systems, and/or scales they believe are needed to advance the field. We will also be joined by three fantastic mentors: Alexandra Worden, Manu Prakash, and Naomi Levine, who will share their experiences and perspectives during mealtimes. We look forward to growing our community with you in 2022.
We are especially interested in applications from underrepresented groups and underrepresented geographical regions in the microbial oceanographic community.
