DISCO: History

The first Dissertations Symposium in Chemical Oceanography (DISCO) was held in Honolulu, HI from 26 February to 2 March 1978, followed by DISCO II in Miami, FL in 1979, then by all subsequent symposia in the State of Hawai‘i. In October 2024, we will hold the 29th DISCO symposium in Kailua-Kona, Hawai‘i (exact venue to be determined).

The idea for DISCO was originally proposed by Edward Goldberg of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. These career-spanning symposia have introduced new PhD graduates to each other, as well as to the granting agencies, with a goal of promoting the exchange of recent research results and providing a venue where scientific ideas are exchanged amongst peers.

DISCO participants, numbering ~25 invitees per meeting, have come from a diverse set of institutions across the U.S. and from international locales, chosen based on their dissertation research contribution towards current problems in chemical oceanography.

Each symposium has featured a guest speaker to serve as inspiration and mentor to the new cohort group of young chemical oceanographers: since 2000, the speaker has been a senior active research scientist in the field of Chemical Oceanography. Prior to that, speakers were chosen from prominent faculty at the university where the meeting was held, thus most of them were from the University of Hawai‘i.

During the symposia, each of the participants presents their graduate research, and participates in discussions on topics relevant to young investigators, such as new directions in science, proposal writing, and how to start a research career. The research topics discussed reflect current scientific and societal priorities, ranging from elemental cycles, to ocean acidification, to organic geochemistry and biochemistry, amongst other topics.

On the occasion of the 10th DISCO meeting, a survey was sent to all past participants, which resulted in an EOS publication (Green & Sackett, 1988; PDF). During the year of the 25th DISCO meeting (2016), an OPEN MIKE town hall was conducted at the February Ocean Sciences meeting in New Orleans for reflections on historical achievements in chemical oceanography and the influence of DISCO on participants’ careers. An additional day was added to the 25th DISCO meeting (October 2016), for the start of the COME ABOARD workshop, to which all interested parties were invited, to discuss current and future research directions in chemical oceanography. A paper, reporting the results of this workshop, was published in the journal of Marine Chemistry (Fassbender et al. 2017, Volume 196, Pp 181-190, doi.org/10.1016/j.marchem.2017.09.002).

Click on the meeting number to go that meeting’s page, which has the meeting location and the list of participants.

DISCO #	Year	Guest Speaker
DISCO I	1978	John Craven, UH
DISCO II	1979	William W. Hay, RSMAS
DISCO III	1981	John Carlmark, US Navy & John W. Shupe, HNEI
DISCO IV	1982	John Craven, UH
DISCO V	1984	NOT KNOWN
DISCO VI	1985	NOT KNOWN
DISCO VII	1987	Fred Mackenzie, UH
DISCO VIII	1988	Dave Karl, UH
DISCO IX	1990	Barry Raleigh, UH
DISCO X	1991	Steve Smith, UH
DISCO XI	1993	Fred Duennebier, UH
DISCO XII	1994	Bob Bidigare, UH
DISCO XIII	1996	NOT KNOWN
DISCO XIV	1997	Frank Sansone, UH
DISCO XV	1999	Frank Sansone, UH
DISCO XVI	2000	Eric Saltzman, UC Irvine
DISCO XVII	2002	Frank Millero, U. of Miami
DISCO XVIII	2003	Chris Measures, UH
DISCO XIX	2005	Jim Murray, UW
DISCO XX	2006	Bill Fitzgerald, Univ. of Connecticut
DISCO XXI	2008	Peter Brewer, MBARI & Cindy Lee, SUNY
DISCO XXII	2010	Claudia Benitez-Nelson, Univ. of So. Carolina
DISCO XXIII	2012	Chris Reddy, WHOI
DISCO XXIV	2014	Ken Johnson, MBARI
DISCO XXV	2016	Robert Anderson, LDEO, Columbia Univ
DISCO XXVI	2018	Lihini Aluwihare, SIO, UCSD
DISCO XXVII	2021	Rick Keil, UW
DISCO XXVIII	2022	Angelicque White, University of Hawai‘i
DISCO XXIX	2024	To be announced

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DISCO by Year

DISCO: History