President's news update
Added on 2009-11-20 10:14:00 by Thorndyke, Mike

The MARS network has been at the centre of several and very important European Infrastructure developments in the past year. Mike Thorndyke, our president, has written a position paper, which gives a short overview of these developments.

MARS members are playing leading roles, if not THE leading role in many of these activities.

These range from a new Integrated Infrastructure programme ASSEMBLE (www.assemblemarine.org), a new ESFRI approved initiative EMBRC (European Marine Biological Resource Centre) and, perhaps most exciting of all, a developing collaboration with UNESCO-IOC to work with them towards the development of a World Association of Marine Laboratories (WAMS). I was fortunate to be invited to speak at the recent NAML (North American Association of Marine Laboratories) meeting in Savannah USA where we discussed MARS and plans for both NAML and MARS to coordinate their activities. In these “interesting times” of climate change and ocean acidification it increasingly important that marine laboratories worldwide come together and utilize their unique interdisciplinary character, “From gene to ecosystem and beyond” in order to deliver exciting top level science and provide our stakeholders with accurate and meaningful data.

You can download a position paper, which gives a short overview of these developments.

Position paper: MARS, WAMS, EMBRC and a Global Marine Resource Centre.

By Mike Thorndyke (President of MARS)
Kristineberg 20th November 2009