Southampton postgraduate researcher to attend the Global Young Scientists Summit in 2018
Gregory Cooper, Postgraduate Research Student from Geography and Environment at Southampton, will be attending the Global Young Scientists Summit in Singapore in January 2018. He will attend alongside 250+ postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers from across the world in the fields of chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering and the environment.
Gregory describes attending the Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) as a once-in-a-PhD opportunity, if not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The annual meeting in Singapore is designed to bring together 250+ postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers to “address key areas in science, research and technology innovation”. The week-long event is highly interdisciplinary – covering a range of topics from medicine to engineering and biology to physics. With the support of Professor John Dearing and Professor Pete Langdon, Gregory Cooper (Geography and Environment) was awarded the chance to attend the multidisciplinary global summit focusing on “how research can be harnessed to address major global challenges”. GYSS has come at an opportune moment as Greg passed his PhD viva in December, focusing on the future resilience of an Indian coastal lagoon fishery system in the face of internal (ecosystem degradation and fishery pressures) and external (climate change and globalisation) stresses.
The week itself consists of panel discussions, plenary sessions led by pioneers at the forefront of their disciplines (Nobel Prize, Fields Medal and Turing Award winners), plus opportunities to get out and explore Singapore. Moreover, the poster session is designed to bring together ideas and researchers from different fields, providing an exciting opportunity for Greg to share broader insights from his PhD with researchers outside of Geography. The challenges of climate change, disaster resilience and sustainable development are often considered as global priorities for geographers, so it will be particularly interesting to learn whether leading chemists, physicists and engineers also hold these issues in such regard. Greg will provide future updates about his time at GYSS and his thoughts post-event, so please watch this space as well as his Twitter feed.