This summer, Emily Hague, a PhD researcher based within the Marine Spatial Analysis Group at Heriot-Watt University, had a fantastic experience visiting and meeting with SATURN project researchers based at our coordinating institute MaREI in Cork, Ireland, and at Aarhus University, in Denmark. Emily’s visits were part of a European Exchange scheme to encourage and foster new collaborations across institutions (funded by the Scottish Funding Council, under the MASTS-SFC Scottish Emerging Researcher European Exchange Scheme). Emily’s work closely aligns with Saturn’s, where back in Scotland she focuses on anthropogenic impacts on marine mammals, with a special focus on coastal vessel activity (see https://bit.ly/ScottishVesselProject ).
Emily met with researchers, science communicators, and research and project coordinators contributing to the Saturn project, which helped to build a deeper understanding of the questions being explored and the approaches used. Following these rich discussions, Emily held and facilitated open workshops at each host institute, providing attendees new opportunities to connect with researchers with complementary research interests, to identify potential future collaborators, and to discuss current research challenges and gaps that could be addressed within future research projects. The workshops were well attended and a great success. Emily would like to take this opportunity to warmly thank all those that gave their time and support during these visits, and to wish the Saturn project every success going forward.
You can watch a video about Emily's visits here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv-XVz9TzRw and follow Emily on Twitter: https://twitter.com/emilyhague