Coastal and Environmental Research Committee

The SURA Coastal and Environmental Research Committee is comprised of SURA Voting Members who elect to serve on the Committee, plus other individuals from SURA’s member institutions.

The Committee may include non-voting members as it deems appropriate, such as representatives from federal agencies involved in coastal and marine sciences or researchers from other coastal ocean related programs (see membership of full committee)

• Robert Twilley, Louisiana State University

• Carolyn Wilson, Staff Liaison

Responsibilities of the Coastal and Environmental Research Committee

The SURA Coastal and Environmental Research Committee (CERC) will enable our primary constituency, the academic community, to achieve transformational scientific advances via a distributed community approach that transcends the resources and capabilities of any single institution. At the present time, this involves supporting the effective implementation of the SURA Super-Regional Modeling Testbed initiative including the development of a strategic plan to sustain funding for the testbed. In the future, however, the CERC should actively promote other such projects. The Committee is responsible for monitoring, overseeing, and evaluating the progress and outcome of all SURA-supported projects and activities in coastal research. The Committee will evaluate new project requests and make recommendations to the SURA Board for action, including the formation and or dissolution of Scientific Interest Groups (SIGs). New understandings should be the ultimate outcome of CERC pursuits. Understandings that are truly transformational can be quickly followed by new solutions to societal problems. SURA and the CERC can enable the dialogue that is essential to real interoperability.