Announcing the Mentoring Program of SCOR WG 161: Respiration in the Mesopelagic Ocean

The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) working group 161 [WG 161- Respiration in the Mesopelagic or ReMO] announces a capacity-building program to foster exchange of expertise and to establish international collaborations in the area of respiration in the mesopelagic ocean for early-career scientists. See the poster here.

The mentoring program aims to enable participants to develop an original research project linked to mesopelagic microbial respiration, using either observations, experimentation, or modeling approaches. The program will further facilitate participants to start up new collaborations and strengthen their network in the field of mesopelagic respiration globally. The duration of the mentoring program will be limited to a maximum of 3 years until the end of the WG.

Mentors will be members of the SCOR WG 161, whose research expertise is available on the SCOR WG webpage. They will provide technical guidance on experiments and study design, supervision of data analysis, exchange of scientific articles, advice with writing proposals and/or manuscripts, etc. Information about capacity-building workshops, conferences, job opportunities, etc will also be provided by the mentors. Applicants can select a research project from the “list of research projects” suggested by the mentors or, alternatively, suggest their own research project based on their interests. In this latter case, the applicants should specify in the application which mentor they wish to collaborate with. Mentees will be responsible for leading all aspects of the research project, with the support of the mentors. The progress of the projects will be reviewed with monthly meetings between the mentor and the mentee.

Applicants to the scheme should be postgraduate students or postdoctoral researchers who completed their Ph.D. in the last 7 years. Applications should include a letter of motivation, including a description of the applicant’s research interests and relevance to mesopelagic respiration, and a recent CV. The mentoring scheme is open to all early-career scientists involved in oceanographic work; however, applications from researchers from developing countries and from regions where there is a lack of knowledge/expertise in mesopelagic respiration will be given preference. Due to the unpredictability of the COVID-19 situation, the program will be conducted virtually. Unfortunately there is no specific funding available for this scheme, however, we encourage the mentee/mentor partnership to apply for external funding to enable a visit to the mentor’s institution. This also applies to mentees interested in participating in the training course on model and observational approaches to derive mesopelagic respiration that will be held in 2023 as part of the WG activities.

All applications should be sent to natalia.osma@imo-chile.cl by the 10th of April 2022.