Earlier this month, 7 Southampton researchers travelled to the Young Coastal Scientist & Engineer’s conference (YCSEC), in Manchester. Post-doctoral researcher, Matt Wadey, along with PhD students Seb Pitman, Rob Mawdsley, Aimin Amiruddin, Clementine Chirol, Esme Flegg and Anas Mohamad Annuar all made the journey for the conference. The conference is aimed at young scientists and engineers concerned with any aspect of physical coastal science or engineering.
Research focussing on coastal science is often investigated under various disciplinary labels, including oceanography, geography, geology and engineering. The conference was first convened in 2005, to address the fragmentation of the discipline, which is felt most by young coastal researcher’s starting out in their career.
The conference opened with an interesting keynote lecture by Prof. Vladimir Nikora, from the University of Aberdeen, on his work in the field of fluid mechanics. The conference had a number of themes, including a sea level session which was opened with talks by Rob and Amin on their research into global changes in sea level, and seasonal variability in the South China Sea, respectively. Seb also presented some of his work on the detection of rip currents during the coastal session. In addition to these talks, Matt, Clementine and Esme all presented posters on their work during 3 poster sessions.
The conference closed with a laboratory demonstration of The University’s model wave turbines and a wave energy converter.
written by Sebastian Pitman, photos courtesy of Anas Mohammad Annuar.
