Two IMarEST Fellows appointed to coordinate NERC Innovation Programme in Oil and Gas

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has appointed a multi-disciplinary team to coordinate the Innovation Programme in Oil and Gas.

The team will be led by Dr Mark Calverley, a Fellow of the IMarEST, who also sits on its Operational Oceanography Special Interest Group (OOSIG). The co-chair of the OOSIG and a Fellow of the IMarEST, Dr Gus Jeans, also joins him on this team.

The Innovation Programme in Oil and Gas is a five-year programme driven by both the needs of the business community and decision makers. The programme focuses on a series of industry challenges and cross-cutting themes which have been developed through individual consultation with oil and gas companies and their supply chain, policymakers, regulators and environmental consultancies.

The coordination team will be tasked with enabling industry, policymakers and regulators to engage in greater depth with the UK research community, allowing them and their supply chains to more readily access new innovations, knowledge and technologies arising from funded activities. The coordination team will work closely with the projects funded through the programme in order to provide specific support, share lessons learnt, facilitate knowledge exchange and ensure the delivery of meaningful impact.

Mark Calverley is the founder and Director of Blue Ocean Consulting. Over the past 28 years he has been involved with numerous coastal and ocean projects around the globe, supporting a range of sectors including water, oil and gas, offshore renewables and mining. Creating value from data has been a key interest and this has extended into his more recent work in the innovation space looking how to deliver greater value from a broad range of data. Mark is currently a member of the Marine Industries Liaison Group, member of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology (IMarEST) Operational Oceanography Special Interest Group (OOSIG) and member of the Marine Autonomous Systems Regulatory Working Group.

Gus Jeans is the founder and Director of Oceanalysis Ltd, established in January 2012 to serve all users of metocean data, with particular focus on offshore energy. Gus has worked for over 25 years as a professional oceanographer, close to the interface between academia and offshore industry. He has considerable enthusiasm for the development of applications from scientific research. He has been a co-chair of the IMarEST OOSIG since it was formed in 2012. A key objective of this group is to promote engagement between users and suppliers of ocean information.