In November the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, hosted the annual Postgraduate Research in Marine and Earth Science Conference. This conference is primarily aimed at PhD and early-career researchers in a broad range of earth and marine disciplines, providing a platform to practice presentation skills and poster production. The event was a huge success with 80 delegates from a range of institutions, key note speakers from the University of Cambridge and Durham University, and industry representation in the form of Gardline Ltd.

First year PhD student Seb Pitman, of the Geology and Geophysics Research Group, gave a presentation on the formation, persistence and spacing of rip currents. The talk outlined the basic form of rip currents and the great hazard they pose to casual and recreational users of the coastal zone, as well as the likely direction the PhD project will take. Seb’s research is a collaboration between the University of Southampton (Shari Gallop, Ivan Haigh, Sasan Mahmoodi), Plymouth University (Gerd Masselink), and UNESCO-IHE (Roshanka Ranasinghe). His research aims to create an automated method of detecting rip currents from video imagery to generate quantitative data sets from sites around the world.

Seb was awarded with the prize for the best presentation by a first year PhD student.

Sebastian Pitman presenting at the Postgraduate Research in Marine and Earth Science Conference, 2013