ORONO, Maine — Nine researchers from the University of Maine are heading to Bourdeaux, France, where they will be attending the Physics of Estuaries and Coastal Seas conference.
The conference presents the scientists with an opportunity to meet, compare notes, and receive advice from the field’s top minds.
Sized at about 200 attendees, UMaine will be well represented. In fact, the conference is being co-hosted by Dr. Lauren Ross, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Ross said the work she and her colleagues do is rooted in Maine.
“Our research questions, the things we are asking and the things we are doing research on based on the coastal communities,” she said.
One of the five Ph.D. students is Nalika Lakmali, who said she has dreamed of researching a river with tides as high as the Penobscot River.
“There are a lot of tides in here,” she said of being able to conduct research in Maine. “I am in the best place in the world to study tides.”
Dr. Kimberly Huguenard, one of Lakmali's advisors, said she can personally attest the value attending conferences can have.
“It's something that I did when I was a Ph.D. student,” she said. “It really stuck with me and is some of the reason why I wanted to go into academia.”
One thing she is presenting at the conference is research done on how tides, storm surges, and river flow converge during a storm.
“It’s not just one plus the other plus the other. It can be much larger than that,” she explained.
The hope is that the PECS conference will spark ideas and methods for studying such phenomena.