Do you accept students?
“We try to get graduate students involved because it's important to give them a leg up and build the next generation but they get rated just as rigorously as everybody else. To apply there are national and multinational IODP organizations which coordinate selection of candidates for sailing. Japan has J-DESC . The US has the Science Support Program. In the EU, including Canada and Israel. it's called ECORD and for Australia and New Zeland it's called ANZIC. We notify them of an expedition. They put out the information to their universities and affiliated groups who distribute and return the applications. Each of those groups will send us a ranked list of 15 or 20 applicants with Cvs and evaluations. Our Co-chiefs and project managers make final selections also including the individual's experience, promise, and how they would fit into the expedition in terms of their research goals."
What is entailed in your role as EPM?
“The EPMs are actively involved throughout the planning process in just about everything from the proposal stage onward. We're present at the meetings to make sure everyone is aware of the design, capabilities and basic logistics of a working research ship. We work with the co-chief scientists and the international organizations to select the scientists who will be on the project and select their gear. We also contribute to writing the science plan and prospectus. Overall we need to make sure the work environment is conducive to getting the job done. The EPM's chief function is coordination, on, to make it all work together. Basically the EPM is on his own. Sometimes one or more of the other EPMs will join in and contribute and there are staff here that support us. About 80% of the EPM's work is in the lead-up to the expedition itself.
If I were to sum it up for anyone interested in this work I'd say you have to have good organization and coordination skills, you have to be very time-sensitive for scheduling and logistics and to communicate updates to everyone on all the changes that occur during the preparation and lead-up to sailing. And you need to be diplomatic.
Finally, it's a 24 hr a day process when on-board ship. But having said that you get to work with a lot of very interesting and very smart people and the environments that you do your drilling in are always very interesting. The support groups that you work with are equally very interesting and you learn a lot about your own capabilities and what you need to improve on because 98% of the people you work with are incredibly smart and experienced and able to do quick and comprehensive analysis on what and why we're seeing what we're seeing. It's all pretty humbling to be there and work in these circumstances.”
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