The fourteenth edition of the VLIZ Young Marine Scientists' Day was again a successful event! There were 333 marine professionals and students present in the VIVES in Brugge on Friday 7 March that brought this day to a great success. Senior scientist Jan Bourgois explained how he gave his research on excercise physiology a "marine twist" by studying the shocking reality of drowning at sea. Ann-Katrien Lescrauwaet gave insight in the Compendium for Coast and Sea, and explained what use it has for the public of undergraduates, (post)docs and senior scientists. Six companies participated in the first edition of the marine job fair and got a lot of potential new employees on the floor of their booth. Young marine scientists had an opportunity to show their scientific results, representing the multidisciplinary in the Flemish marine research. It was an exciting competition; the audience was asked to vote for the best pitch presentation and the poster of the day. Also, the winners of the VLIZ Thesis Award and the VLIZ North Sea Award could show their work to the audience. Here you can find an overview of the winners, abstracts, posters and pictures.
The abstracts of all participants and award winners can be found in the Book of Abstracts. It gives you a nice overview of the current marine research in Flanders and surroundings.
Twenty contestants were invited to prepare a short pitch presentation (max. 5 minutes) for the plenary session. The others could present their work during the poster session. The audience could vote the best oral and the best scientific poster.
Top-3 pitch presentations:
1: Jan Reubens- Big brother is watching you! An acoustic receiver network to track the whereabouts of fishes [pitch presentation:
]
2: Valérie Dulière - Linking human activities to eutrophication along the river-ocean continuum with an ecological model [pitch presentation:]
3: Elisabeth Debusschere - Impact of pile-driving of offshore monopile foundations on young sea bass [pitch presentation:]
Top-3 scientific posters:
1: Desender Marieke, Koen Chiers, Bart Verschueren, Hans Polet, Luc Duchateau, Puvanendran Velmurugu, Atle Mortensen and Annemie Decostere - Electrical trawling for brown shrimp: Impact on young life stages in nurseries and spawning areas? []
2: Bart De Smet, An-Sofie D’Hondt, Pieterjan Verhelst, Jérôme Fournier, Laurent Godet, Nicolas Desroy, Marijn Rabaut, Magda Vincx and Jan Vanaverbeke - New insights in the structuring role of Lanice conchilega reefs in intertidal food webs: a focus on epi- and hyperbenthos []
3: Osuka Kennedy, Melita Samoilys, David Obura, Marc Kochzius and Ann Vanreusel - Linking the densities of fish functional groups and developmental stages to benthic structure []
All other posters that were delivered to us, are made available via the Open Marien Archive (OMA).
Keynote speakers:
J. Bourgois (Fac. of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dept of Movement and Sport Sciences, Univ. Gent) - A lifetime inspired by the ocean: marine environmental effects on human physiology []
A.-K. Lescrauwaet (VLIZ, afdeling Beleidsinformatie) - The Compendium for Coast and Sea - []
North Sea Award 2013:
dr. Anouk de Brauwere (Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Mechanics, Materials and Civil Engineering [IMMC]) : 'Multi-disciplinary/scale modelling of the Scheldt Estuary and tidal river network' (a collection of articles from 2009 to today) - 2009 2012 2013a 2013b 2014
VLIZ Thesis Award for Marine Sciences 2013:
Jeroen De Waegemaeker (Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen, Department Designsciences): 'Climate change as a driver for a renewed coastal tourism? Potentials of a compartmentalized coast for the coastal tourism’ – [M.Sc. thesis:]
Julia Schmidt-Petersen (University of Gent, Department Biology, Researchgroup Fycology): 'What influences predation by Coralliophila? Exploring the relationships between corals, symbiotic zooxanthellae, and corallivorous gastropods' - [M.Sc. thesis:]
All winners of the Young Marine Scientists' Day 2014.
More pictures of the Young Marine Scientists' Day 2014 are available in the VLIZ-photogallery.