On November 1-2, 2010 in New Orleans, the Louisiana Board of Regents and Louisiana EPSCoR program, in partnership with Mississippi and Alabama EPSCoR, hosted a national conference entitled “Collaborative Scientific Research in Relation to the Gulf Oil Spill.” The overriding purpose of the Conference was to promote and sustain interdisciplinary, collaborative research in areas related to the Gulf oil spill and its aftermath. 
To achieve this goal, the Conference was organized around four broadly drawn research strands:
- Engineering Aspects and the Transport and Fate of Spilled Oil
- Coastal and Ocean Environments: Damage, Remediation and Recovery
- Human Communities: Disaster Management, Sustainability and Health
- Economics, Policy and Decision Support Systems
Over 350 people attended the Conference, representing universities throughout the Gulf Coast region and the nation, government agencies, private industry, and community groups. Presentations and discussions across the research strands took place throughout the 
conference, and forty-six posters, many highlighting NSF RAPID-funded research, were presented detailing ongoing research related to the oil spill.
The Conference energized researchers, providing them with a venue to share their work and explore partnership opportunities with scientists from widely diverse backgrounds. The Conference proceedings, to be published in 2011, will further help to broaden understanding of collaborative research in the context of the Gulf oil spill.
More information about the Conference, including speaker presentations, is available at http://rsi.laregents.edu/program-evaluations/oilspill2010/.