Meeting of Young Researchers in the Earth Sciences

Frequently Asked Questions

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  1. What is MYRES?

    MYRES is a workshops series, to be held every other year, that is targeted at junior members (for definition, see below) of the solid Earth science community. The aim of these workshops is to bring together specialists to educate each other about constraints from different fields that pertain on an interdisciplinary problem. By doing so, we intend to foster the growth of a broad community of collaborative researchers and to formulate new research strategies.
    We obtained funding for MYRES-I from NSF and ESF, this first workshop happened in August 2004. As a larger community building effort, we will establish online forums and other means of facilitated communication and research infrastructure improvements. You can read the MYRES manifesto (EOS, 85(16), 160, 2004), and the MYRES-I meeting writeup (EOS, 86(5), 48, 2005).
    In June 2005, the MYRES community decided to support "Dynamics of the lithosphere and plate boundaries" by Laurent Montesi and Giulio Di Toro. Laurent will be leading the new team and efforts to obtain funding for MYRES-II.

  2. What is the definition of a "Young Researcher" for the purposes of MYRES? Is there an age limit to be allowed to participate?

    No, there is no physical age limit. We simply give preference in terms of funding to people from senior grad student (post qualifier or equivalent) to pre-tenure faculty (or equivalent).

  3. Where can I learn more about MYRES?

    You can read the MYRES manifesto, check out the MYRES-I web page, or read the conference proposal draft as HTML, the actual NSF proposal as PDF, this list of frequently asked questions, and slides from a micro presentation at the CIDER meeting, May 2003. Also see MYRES resource page. If you have specific questions about MYRES that are not addressed here, send email to info@myres.org. For questions about MYRES-I, please contact the meeting chairs, James Kellogg and Thorsten Becker.

  4. Why are MYRES workshops not just another (Gordon) meeting?

    We explain the guiding principles behind MYRES in some detail in our NSF proposal. However, the main idea is to speed up building an open community of researchers in a variety of fields that can teach each other and easily exchange data and tools across traditional boundaries. The meeting itself will have a large educational part, with novel peer-reviewed tutorials and freely available, web published lecture notes.

  5. What is the scientific focus of MYRES, is it a SEDI-type effort?

    While the first MYRES-I workshop had a deep Earth focus, we envision future meetings to be on different Solid Earth subject matters, e.g., crustal deformation or the earthquake problem. MYRES is organized bottom-up and the MYRES web site as well as EOS announcements will be used to solicit and review proposals for future meetings in a democratic fashion. In fact, the second MYRES meeting will have to be from a field outside deep Earth.

  6. Is MYRES limited to North American Scientists?

    No. On the contrary, MYRES is an international meeting and we encourage participation from researchers around the world. Partial travel and conference cost support was available for 85 participants, thanks to joint funding from the US National Science Foundation and the European Science Foundation.

  7. What is the status of the MYRES proposal?

    We submitted to NSF in the end of August of 2003 and obtained funding for one meeting, MYRES-I which happened in August 2004. The European Science Foundation provided additional travel support for MYRES-I.
    In June 2005, the MYRES community decided to support "Dynamics of the lithosphere and plate boundaries" by Laurent Montesi and Giulio Di Toro. Laurent will be leading the new team and efforts to obtain funding for MYRES-II.

  8. Who is working on the MYRES project?

    The MYRES-I steering committee consisted of Thorsten Becker (USC, ex officio), Magali Billen (UC Davis), James Kellogg (UCLA, ex officio), Jeanne Hardebeck (USGS Menlo Park), Cin-Ty Lee (Rice), Laurent Montesi (WHOI), Wendy Panero (U Michigan), Frederik Simons (UC London), and Shijie Zhong (U Boulder).
    Please contact Laurent, if you want to contribute.

  9. What was the first MYRES meeting, MYRES-I, about?

    MYRES-I focused on "Heat, Helium, Hotspots, and Whole Mantle Convection". A list of conveners is as follows:
    • Heat and mass flux:
      • Jie Li (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) and
      • Sujoy Mukhopadhyay (Harvard University)
    • Nature of boundary layers:
    • Constraints on interior dynamics:
      • Wendy Panero (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
      • Frederik Simons (Princeton University)
    • Surface observables as constraints:
    See the MYRES-I web site.

  10. Is MYRES a job market initiative?

    No. MYRES is not meant to be a job-market initiative but rather as an attempt to disconnect from the politics of a scientific career temporarily and focus on the science itself in an environment that encourages cooperation. But see the MYRES resource page.

  11. How can I obtain updates on the MYRES project?

    Check back on the MYRES and MYRES-I websites frequently. To get in touch with us, sign up on our mailing list, or volunteer to contribute to this community effort please send an email to info@myres.org.

  12. Who pays for all this?

    MYRES and MYRES-I are funded by the National Science Foundation. Additional support for MYRES-I for European researchers is provided by the European Science Foundation and additional on-site funding comes from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California, San Diego.

Main page | MYRES-I | Manifesto | MYRES-I writeup | Resources | Contacts | FAQs
info@myres.org

$Date: 2005/05/02 21:24:21 $, $Author: becker $