NSF Convergence Accelerator: Future of Oceans: Innovation, Exploration, and Utilization

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This project will organize and host a workshop focused on the future of oceans. The conference aims to bring together stakeholders from numerous disciplines and organizations - spanning academia, industry, government, and foundations - in order to identify and explore avenues for collaborations in ocean innovation, exploration, and utilization. The goal is to develop a potential future topic (track) of the NSF Convergence Accelerator, identifying the potential scope of the topic, the potential deliverables that could result from supporting that topic, the disciplinary expertise that could come together under a convergence research approach, and the partnerships that could be engaged across academia, industry, foundations, and government if the topic were supported. The ocean is a primary source of food, energy, weather and climate stabilization, ecological diversity, and numerous other resources important to society. By identifying convergent approaches for ocean innovation, exploration, and utilization, this conference will have direct impact on sustainability concerns (energy, food, climate, pollution), national security matters (defense, risk assessment, marine technologies), and national industries (fishing, shipping, oil, energy, tourism). Academia, industry, non-profits, and governments have increasing interest in ocean science and technologies due to emergent needs for ecological, defense, and industrial resources. The workshop will focus on convergent strategies to tackle ocean problems and emerging opportunities from three different lenses: technology, industry, and scientific disciplines. The topic has the potential to be strongly convergent, engaging disciplines across the physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and engineering.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.