2011 Coastal Ocean Modeling Gordon Research Conference

智力优势：戈登研究会议有一个很好的成功秘诀，几十年来发展和数百个跨学科的会议。戈登基金会提供了大量的费用分摊和基础设施支持，并从私人基金会和联邦机构寻求额外的捐款。由社区选出的项目主席组成了一个项目委员会，邀请领先的研究人员对一系列重要问题进行批判性总结，并突出最新的发展。还征聘了讨论带头人，以促进和主持与会者之间的讨论。大多数参加会议的人都说，这是他们过去一年参加过的最好的科学会议。这个关于沿海海洋建模的戈登会议每四年举行一次，以静修的方式举行（今年在马萨诸塞州南哈德利的霍利奥克山学院举行）。它汇集了学术界，联邦和国际研究人员的多元化群体，分享最新发现，并确定沿海海洋建模的新挑战。本次会议探讨的许多主题（如数值计算、近岸模拟、中尺度过程、生态系统动力学等方面的进展）都与NSF的研究领域直接相关。更广泛的影响：会议最重要的广泛影响是建立和培养高级研究人员与学生/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参与者之间的非正式互动，并且由于戈登研究会议在类似务虚会的地点举行，因此有无与伦比的机会在不同年龄组的人之间建立这些关系和交流思想，而且在该领域的不同子领域，或在不同的地理区域。

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.