Announcing the 2018 JMSE Travel Awards for Postdoctoral Researchers and Ph.D. Students

This is the first year that the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE) has offered travel awards and we were overwhelmed by the number and standard of the applications. Therefore, it was a very difficult task to finalise the top postgraduate and postdoctoral candidates. I am indebted to the Editors and Editorial Board members, who helped with this process.

As the Editor-in-Chief of JMSE, I am pleased to announce the winners:

The postgraduate student award was granted to Ms. Laura Weber, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate supervised by Dr. Amy Apprill in the MIT/WHOI joint programme. The postdoctoral award was granted to Dr. Frederic M Evers, a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich (Figure 1).

Ms. Laura Weber’s dissertation focused on characterising the microbial landscape of coral reef environments at different scales. Laura has co-authored five peer-reviewed publications, including an article in Nature Communications. The JMSE award will be used to attend the Gordon Research Seminar—Marine Microbial Strategies for Survival in a Changing Environment—where Laura will present on the topic: “Genomic Investigations into Coral-Picoplankton Interactions within the Coral Ecosphere”.

Dr. Frederic Evers received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 2017 from ETH Zurich, where he worked in the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) supervised by Prof. Dr. Robert Boes. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich investigating tsunami waves. Dr Boes has co-authored ten peer-reviewed journal articles and was the first author on a paper published in JMSE, which was entitled “Impulse Wave Generation: Comparison of Free Granular with Mesh-Packed Slides”. Dr Evers will use his award to attend the 36^th International Conference on Coastal Engineering (ICCE) 2018, where he will present the first insights from an interdisciplinary project on tsunamis triggered by submarine landslides.

On behalf of the Section Editors, Managing Editor and Editorial Board members, it is my pleasure to congratulate Ms. Laura Weber and Dr. Frederic Evers on winning the 2018 JMSE Travel Awards. We are very grateful to MDPI for sponsoring these travel awards and to all who submitted applications. The high standard of applications bodes well for the future of marine science and engineering. We wish you all continued success in your careers.