Announcing the 2020 JMSE Travel Awards for Postdoctoral Researchers and Ph.D. Students

We received 66 applications this year for the JMSE travel awards. They were evaluated by Editors and Editorial Board members, to whom I would like to express my sincere thanks.

I am very happy to announce that the 2020 winners are: Mr Oliver Jack Billson (Figure 1a), a PhD student at the University of Liverpool, supervised by Professor Paul Russell (Plymouth University), and Dr Gal Eyal (Figure 1b), a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Global Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia and Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Mr. Oliver Billson’s research investigates the resilience of coastal infrastructure against predicted sea level rise and shoreline recession. He has five peer-reviewed publications, including an article in this Journal [1]. The travel award will be used to present on: “Observations of infragravity response during extreme storms on sand and gravel beaches” at the International Coastal Symposium 2020 in Seville, which has been rescheduled for 3–6 May 2021.

Dr. Gal Eyal received his PhD in 2017 from Tel-Aviv University and The Interuniversity Institute in Eilat. After a short postdoctoral fellowship at Tel-Aviv University, he began his Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2018. Dr. Eyal is currently working on mesophotic coral ecosystems in the Marine Palaeoecology Lab at The University of Queensland. He has published more than 25 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Eyal will use his travel award to present at the 14th International Coral Reef Symposium, Bremen, 18–23 July 2021 on: “Unforeseen mesophotic-selective coral bleaching in a geographic thermal refuge”.

On behalf of JMSE, I would like to congratulate Mr. Oliver Billson and Dr. Gal Eyal on their successful applications and thank all who applied for the 2020 JMSE Travel Awards. As in previous years, the standard was very high.