University of Georgia – Georgia Sea Grant Gulf Oil Spill Symposium, "Building Bridges in Crisis"

Tuesday, January 25, 2010 at 2p.m.
University of Georgia Chapel
Public keynote lecture by Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in Residence; former chief scientist for NOAA.
Keynote lecture and symposium are free and open to the public. Registration is not required

The University of Georgia and Georgia Sea Grant invites you to join scientists, government officials, Gulf coast community leaders and journalists from across the nation in Athens, Georgia, on January 25-27, 2011, to examine communication during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. 

Attendees will explore how scientists, government officials, Gulf coast community leaders and journalists collaborated in the spill's research and response efforts and coordinated information flow.

The UGA/Georgia Sea Grant Gulf Oil Spill Symposium will explore how these groups collaborated in research and response efforts and coordinated information flow throughout the nation’s worst maritime oil spill.

The agenda for this two-day event includes:

A one-day public event on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 to hear leaders representing various fields discuss how they and their organizations responded to the spill and to suggest ways to streamline information flow among stakeholders. The symposium will conclude with a roundtable discussion that will synthesize ideas from the individual sessions and define areas of consensus.

On the second and final day, Thursday, January 27, panelists and moderators will be invited to a closed session to develop a white paper that will detail the lessons learned from the symposium, especially those with implications for other complex situations involving the intersection of science, government, industry and the public.

Register today at http://oilspill.uga.edu to attend the symposium, which is free and open to the public.

Georgia Sea Grant is one of 32 university-based programs that address local and national issues of importance on our oceans and coasts. GSG is part of this nationwide network of programs that work with coastal communities. The National Sea Grant College Program engages this network of the nation’s top universities in conducting scientific research, education, training, and extension projects designed to foster science-based decisions about the use and conservation of our aquatic resources.