Bravo Zulu to the OCEANS 2022 Chennai for successful conference. Once again, the conference was conducted in a hybrid mode that permitted attendance and speakers from all corners of the world to have engaging and substantive conversations. Along with a strong technical track the team conducted a hackathon, an ECOP session, a Women in Engineering Session and the kick-off of the IOC activity co-sponsored by MTS and the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) - Forum for Dialogue with Industry: How can industry work with science and government to advance Ocean Observing for 2030? This forum is designed to capture feedback from industry partners to maturing the ocean observing market and will result in recommendations that both MTS and GOOS have the ability and interest to act upon. Together we will identify the barriers and the opportunities. In the coming weeks we will have more information on this new action on the MTS and GOOS website and look forward to engaging all of you on this activity. Congratulations to the Aryan Anand, Akash R and Shreya Keshri, winners of new MTS Nanda Student innovation. This award has been set up in memory of Dr. Kumar Nanda, who was a strong supporter of MTS and especially the students. Thank you to Dr. Nanda’s family and friends for setting up the fund and for their contributions. We also thank the following organization who joined MTS in sponsoring this award: ELEKTRONIK LAB, Inmarsat, Sonardyne, and Aries.
Our next event is Oceans In Action in Gulfport, MS 7-10 March, which I am positive will be a forum with thought provoking conversation. MTS will be represented by several board members at Oceanology International in London in March. We are so pleased that Captain Don Walsh will travel to London to award the second winners of the Captain Don Walsh Award for Ocean Exploration award, which has been won jointly by Commander Victor Vescovo, USN, Retired and Patrick Lahey for the 2019 Five Deeps Expedition. I will be moderating one of the Oceans Futures conference sessions which will in part will be the second session of our IOC activity - Dialogue with Industry. MTS will have a booth. The board members attending would love to see you on the floor of OI. Amanda Johnston, from HQ, will be attending. Please reach out to her so we can find time to visit your booth and connect with you.