Lähettäjä: Krisztina Szalai - Operation Wallacea [mailto:kriszti@opwall.com]
Lähetetty: 14. joulukuuta 2009 11:25
Vastaanottaja: Seppo Saarela
Aihe: Biological Research Expeditions - Operation Wallacea

Dear Dr. Saarela,

Following up on our phone call this morning I am emailing to let you know about the research opportunities offered by the Operation Wallacea biodiversity research programmes that have been running for 13 years in UK universities and for the last 5 years in US and Canadian Universities as well.

 

We would like to develop academic links with European Universities and are therefore contacting a few academics with relevant research expertise such as yourself to see if the opportunities afforded by the Opwall research programmes might be of interest as potential site to undertake field research during the summer brake.

We run tropical field research expeditions during the summer holidays to which we would like to invite academics, postgraduates and undergraduates to contribute to the research. Each summer we have 130+ academics working on the various research projects in the field, co-fund 22 PhD students at universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Cardiff etc and produce more than 25 papers each year from the various sites. 

These expeditions give a great opportunity for the undergraduates to collect data for a dissertation or to gain experience of working as a research assistant on site for which they can also get credit points as  Imperial College London has approved the programme and is offering 7.5 ECTS credit for students joining as Research Assistants from European Universities.

We also fund field research projects with academics at our research sites and one of our goals is to develop these into part-funded PhD studentships. For example we are funding a PhD studentship to develop a biotic water quality index that can be used to assess water quality for Honduras rivers.  In addition we have studies on water quality in mangrove lagoons in Honduras and on the tolerance of corals to water temperature and quality changes on Indonesian reefs.

I would be very grateful if you could bring this programme to the attention of any of your students  who might be looking for biological research opportunities in the tropics over the summer. I've attached some draft wording for an email that could be forwarded to undergrads so they can see the opportunities and benefits of joining biodiversity field research projects with Operation Wallacea.

 

I will also send you some brochures about the 2010 research projects if you wish or alternatively our website (www.opwall.com) provides a great deal of information about the different projects and ways of involvement.

 

Anyway, I hope this is of interest and please feel free to contact me if you need any further information.

 

Kind regards,

 

Krisztina Szalai

 

Krisztina Szalai
Research Assistant
Operation Wallacea
Wallace House
Old Bolingbroke
Spilsby, Lincs
PE23 4EX

 

Tel; 01790 763194
Fax; 01790 763825
Email; kriszti@opwall.com
Web; www.opwall.com