Fundamental problems in the Earth Sciences remain hotly debated even after decades of research. For example, our understanding of the style of mantle convection and the origin of hotspots has been substantially modified in the last few years by new observational, laboratory, and modeling work. While this process of change is clearly fundamental for all scientific endeavor, parts of the mantle convection discussion appear to be hindered by lack of effective communication between the disciplines. To help address some of these problems, we propose a conference series and community effort aimed at the people responsible for remedying them: the younger researchers in the community. We believe that a conference in which the conveners, keynote speakers, and conferees are all young researchers will have a number of advantages over traditional formats.
First, we intend to structure the conference program around the underlying mechanisms and processes pertaining to the problem under consideration, as opposed to disciplines of Earth Sciences, to include a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach from the ground up. Second, by explicitly focusing on younger scientists, we can dispense with the pretense that everyone in the room is intimately familiar with every sub-discipline of Solid Earth sciences. Presenters will be asked to bring everyone up to speed with the help of tutorials so that discussions can involve the entire room. This will prevent the phenomenon in which a four-day conference of a hundred people turns into four one-day conferences of twenty-five specialists each. Third, both the lectures and the commentary will come from people who are not among the usual players at meetings. By giving voice to alternative explanations, we hope to elucidate weaknesses in the conventional wisdom, diversify the body of thought, and force us all to defend our assumptions. We will ensure scientific soundness by having experienced junior people as keynote speakers. A senior faculty advisory panel with members from different disciplines will also be present to provide guidance if needed. Fourth, such a conference setting will immediately broaden the community of colleagues available to each of the participants beyond that defined by her or his advisor's coworkers and friends. This will ease the access to new ideas, data, and tools across scientific ``families'' at an early career stage.
We see these community building efforts as the most important outcome of MYRES and expect many high quality collaborations to result. MYRES meetings will strive to provide an open, unbiased, international, informal, and democratic environment for exchange of knowledge and ideas, supplemented by an online community forum. Instructional material and each conference program will be peer-reviewed and openly accessible, and the conference performance will be critically evaluated by attendees and the community at large.
The MYRES initiative is not intended to replace traditional professional conferences; we very much recognize the need for young researchers to learn to defend their ideas before a senior audience. We believe, however, that there is significant scientific, educational, and cultural value in a self-organized gathering of young scientists sharing ideas and challenging dogma.
We request initial funding for a four year period which would entail two pilot MYRES meetings and describe a detailed suggested first workshop schedule and a draft second MYRES program in appendix A. Depending on our experience with the first MYRES and the evaluation of the feedback which we will request, the second workshop could potentially have a modified format. We hope that we can demonstrate the positive impact of MYRES after four years and, if successful, intend to reapply for an extension of the conference series and other community activities thereafter.