Training & Education

See menu on the left to read more about the various POGO training programmes.

Lack of trained personnel is considered to be a major obstacle to development of a global ocean observing system. Therefore, a central element of the POGO agenda is capacity building and training. POGO has developed an extensive array of training and education activities targeted primarily at scientists from developing countries and those with economies in transition.

In partnership with the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), POGO has developed a Visiting Fellowship programme on Oceanographic Observations under which young professionals from developing countries can spend up to three months studying in their speciality at a major oceanographic institution. This programme has been running since 2001 and has been very successful in providing training for scientists and students from developing countries as well as in developing collaborations between institutes. Around a dozen trainees benefit from this initiative each year. The programme fills a real need: it is oversubscribed by a factor of eight.

In collaboration with the Nippon Foundation, POGO established a Visiting Professor Programme under which marine scientists of international standing taught at marine institutions in the developing world for periods of up to three months. This exposed young scientists, particularly from developing countries, to the best oceanographers world-wide and facilitated the formation of professional contacts, invaluable in the development of their scientific careers. This highly successful programme ran for three years and has now metamorphosed into another collaboration with the Nippon Foundation, namely the Centre of Excellence in Ocean Observations hosted at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences. This is an intensive training course for young professionals at the doctoral level, ten months in duration, with an intake of ten trainees per year.

The latest POGO-SCOR venture is the visiting fellowship programme for on-board training on an Atlantic Meridional Transect cruise. This offers the opportunity for a scientist from a developing country to participate in cruise preparation and planning, to help make hydrological, biological and ecological observations on board the ship, and to analyse and statistically interpret the results after the cruise.

Taken together, these initiatives have made, and continue to make, a very solid contribution to raising the world capacity to make ocean observations.