ASLO Announces the 2019 Global Outreach Initiative Award Winners

ASLO Announces the 2019 Global Outreach Initiative Award Winners

The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2019 ASLO Global Outreach Initiative Awards. The ASLO Global Outreach Initiative provides mini-grants to ASLO members to conduct outreach projects in their own communities. This year’s recipients are:

  • Aquatic Sciences Virtual Conference in West Africa (The Gambia, West Africa); Maiyai Hocheimy (The GREAT Institute, Serekunda, The Gambia)
  • Promoting Early Insight into Coastal and Marine Sciences through Participatory Action Research and Cultural Heritage Recovery (Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico); Jose Carlos Pintado-Patiño,Vanesa Papiol NievesCarlos Cruz-VazquezAna M. Castillo-López (ENES Unidad Mérida, Mérida, Mexico)
  • Virtual Reality Applications: A Wealth of Opportunity to Communicate Aquatic Science to locals in Ghana; Fredrick Ekow JonahErnest Obeng Chuku (University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana).
  • Empowering Schools as Epicenters for Watershed Monitoring in Mo’orea, French Polynesia; Kyle Neumann (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

A key component of ASLO’s mission is to advance public awareness and education about aquatic resources and research. In response to an increasingly international membership, ASLO launched the Global Outreach Initiative in 2012 to assist ASLO members outside the U.S. in communicating aquatic science to non-technical audiences."The enthusiasm and creativity of proposals for the ASLO Global Outreach Initiative continue to impress and inspire us," said ASLO Outreach Subcommittee chair Bob Chen (University of Massachusetts – Boston). This year’s selection was highly competitive, with 36 proposals from 17 countries requesting over $104,000 (~10 times the available funds).  “It is always hard to choose winners when there are so many deserving proposals. We are looking forward to seeing the results of this year’s grant winners’ innovative approaches to building capacity in aquatic sciences across the globe,” noted Chen.

“ASLO created the Global Outreach Initiative as a way to support outreach efforts outside of the United States. The number of proposals from diverse countries show the need for this type of program. Our members have been very enthusiastic about the program since its inception. In the past year, individual ASLO members donated enough funds so that we could fund an additional project.” said ASLO President Michael Pace (University of Virginia).

Award winners will submit a report on their project for publication in the L&O Bulletin. When appropriate, project products may also be published on ASLO’s YouTube channel and social media for broader exposure. Reports from projects funded by the ASLO Global Outreach Initiative appear in the November 2013 issueAugust 2017 issue, and February 2019 issue of the L&O Bulletin. More information about the program, including a map of all project locations, is available on the ASLO website.

ASLO is an international aquatic science society that was founded in 1948. For more than 60 years, it has been the leading professional organization for researchers and educators in the field of aquatic science. The purpose of ASLO is to foster a diverse, international scientific community that creates, integrates and communicates knowledge across the full spectrum of aquatic sciences, advances public awareness and education about aquatic resources and research, and promotes scientific stewardship of aquatic resources for the public interest. Its products and activities are directed toward these ends. With more than 4,000 members worldwide, the society has earned an outstanding reputation and is best known for its journals and interdisciplinary meetings. For more information about ASLO, please visit our website at www.ASLO.org.

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