Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative: First three years

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) was established to administer $500 million committed by British Petroleum (BP) to understand the fate and effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident.  Competitive research awards are made by an independent research board following National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation practices. The Board comprises twenty distinguished researchers; 10 members from around the world appointed by BP and 10 members from institutions in the Gulf region appointed by the Gulf of Mexico Alliance. 

The goals of GoMRI are to: 1) study the Deepwater Horizon and similar incidents and their impacts on the environment and public health, and 2) develop improvements for spill mitigation, oil detection and new remediation technologies. Through public input, GoMRI identified five research themes; physical distribution of contaminants; chemical evolution and biological degradation of contaminants; environmental effects and ecosystem recovery; technological developments; and public health.

GOMRI has awarded over 175 million dollars including $45M state-based block grants, approximately $110.5M for multi-institutional consortia and $19 M supporting independent investigators. Results of the next major research competition will be announced in the fall of 2014.

GoMRI has created data management and outreach programs.  Data policies are dedicated to open data discovery and access.  GOMRI has or is supporting over 2,200 researchers (over 350 graduate students) who already have published over 275 manuscripts in globally recognized peer- reviewed journals.  Outreach efforts include consortia specific programs, an active central web portal for access to and exchange of information and a centralized outreach program.