2011 Coastal Ocean Modeling Gordon Research Conference

学术价值：戈登研究会议有一个绝佳的成功秘诀，它是几十年来发展起来的，在科学学科中召开了数百次会议。戈登基金会提供大量的成本分担和基础设施支持，并向私人基金会和联邦机构征集更多捐款。项目主席由社区选举产生，组成一个项目委员会，邀请主要研究人员对一系列重要问题进行批判性总结，并突出最新发展。还聘请了讨论负责人，以鼓励和协调与会者之间的讨论。大多数参加会议的人表示，这是他们在过去一年中参加过的最好的科学会议。这次关于海岸海洋建模的戈登会议每四年在一个静修的环境中举行(今年在马萨诸塞州南哈德利的芒特霍利克学院举行)。它汇集了一群不同的学术、联邦和国际研究人员，分享最新发现，并确定沿海海洋建模的新挑战。这次会议探讨的许多主题(例如，数值、近岸模拟、中尺度过程、生态系统动力学的进展)都与NSF的研究领域直接相关。广泛影响：会议最重要的广泛影响是建立和培养高级研究人员和学生/初级研究人员之间的关系。由于近一半的会议时间被分配给与会者之间的非正式互动，而且戈登研究会议在隐居的地点举行，因此不仅在不同年龄段的人之间，而且在不同领域的不同子领域或不同地理区域的人之间，都有无与伦比的机会建立这些关系和交流思想。

Intellectual Merit: Gordon Research Conferences have an excellent recipe for success, developed over decades and hundreds of conferences across the scientific disciplines. The Gordon Foundation provides substantial cost sharing and infrastructure support, and additional contributions are solicited from private foundations and federal agencies. Program chairs, elected by the community, form a program committee which invites leading researchers to present critical summaries of a range of important problems and to highlight the latest developments. Discussion leaders have also been recruited to stimulate and moderate discussion among the participants. Most people who attend the conference report that it is the best science conference they have attended in the past year.This particular Gordon conference on Coastal Ocean Modeling is held every four years in a retreat setting (this year at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA). It brings together a diverse group of academic, federal and international researchers to share the latest discoveries and identify new challenges in coastal ocean modeling. Many of the topics explored in this conference (e.g. advances in numerics, nearshore modeling, mesoscale processes, ecosystem dynamics) are directly relevant to NSF research areas.Broader Impacts: The most important broad impact of the conference is the establishment and nurturing of relationships between senior researchers and students/junior researchers. Because nearly half of the conference time is allocated to informal interactions among participants, and because Gordon Research Conferences are held in retreat-like locations, there is unparalleled opportunity to build these relationships and exchange ideas among people in not only different age groups, but also in different sub-areas of the field, or in different geographic regions.