2022 was a busy year for MASTS as its members and team saw the reintroduction of in-person meetings and conferences. The year included our first in-person Annual Science Meeting (ASM) after two years of being online. The 12th ASM focussed on the Vision of the Blue Economy had attendees joining from across Scotland and the United Kingdom to participate in themed sessions, workshops, view ePosters, and network with one another. Click here to see more about the meeting and see its programme. During the conference, contributions were made by the newest members of MASTS, staff and students at Robert Gordon University (RGU). With RGU joining as a partner of MASTS in 2022, MASTS now consists of 12 Higher Education Institutes along with its 5 non-HEI partners.
In addition, MASTS awarded a variety of grants awarded to its members: Emerging from Lockdown grants, Aquatic Stressors Travel Grants and the MASTS-Scottish Funding Council (SFC) Saltire Emerging Researchers fund. Starting February 2023, the awardees of the MASTS-SFC will each provide a 3o minute webinar discussing the work they undertook with their European partners, see the topics, speakers and sign-up links here.
Throughout the year MASTS participated in outreach and encouraged engagement with Scottish Marine Science including 6 MASTS webinars (recording available) and on social media on Twitter and LinkedIn, including our highly popular “MASTS Women in STEM” videos –shorter video on Twitter or check out the in-depth video here. On YouTube, the MASTS Marine Renewable Energy Forum commissioned and released its introductory video explaining why collaboration between academics, policy and industry is vital for a just transition to net-zero. Connections and collaborations with further supported by MASTS through its continuous help with running online, hybrid and in-person events including the Structures in the Marine Environment 2022 (SIME22) and the Environmental Interactions of the Marine Renewables (EIMR22)
We also saw many of our graduate school members submit and pass their PhD viva’s before moving on in their careers, see the list of current students and our alumni here.
For MASTS’ behaviour-change initiative, People Ocean Planet (POP), 2022 had many projects completed including:
- the Dive-In! Protecting our Ocean museum exhibition in St Andrews about marine climate change;
- the release of the arctic climate data-driven music album ‘Light Water is Black Water’ and the ‘Holding the Ocean’ online conversation from the POP lead Ocean ARTic partnerships;
- contributing the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation report “Engaging the Public around CoP26: What Worked?”, along with its “top-tips summary report”;
- a tour of Scotland with the Mapping Ocean Change through Art (MOCA) project to establish a participatory-public-engagement approach to the marine climate change;
- the release of the free Ocean and Climate Change – Digital School Science Kit to coincide with the Great Science Share for Schools
Near the end of 2022, POP also established its Ocean Partnerships to provide networking opportunities for those interested in or working on the marine environment from different backgrounds and sectors. With a dedicated mailing list the Ocean Partnership will provide subscribers about networking and forming new collaborations – find out more here.