The Funding Process

The Principal Investigators (PIs: Patty Fryer and Mike Mottl at the University of Hawaii and Geoff Wheat at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks) designed the science project and wrote a proposal describing the project and its cost and sent their proposals to the National Science Foundation. They sent it to the Geosciences Directorate's "Ocean Drilling Program", which is administered within the Marine Geology and Geophysics Section of the Ocean Science Division. The proposal was reviewed anonymously by several scientists at other academic institutions and by a panel of experts who advised the program officers as to the worth of the project. Having fared well in review and in the panel discussions, the National Science Foundation granted the PIs the funding they requested to support the work.

The work of this project is affiliated with the Ocean Drilling Program in part because the research that it will perform is closely related to work that has been done by the drilling program in the past. You can read all about the most recent cruise to the Mariana forearc at this web site: Initial reports of ODP Leg 195.

Some of the work will also be beneficial to deep ocean drilling efforts that have been proposed to the new Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and which have been highly rated by past reviews. So some of the work we will be doing is directed toward answering questions about aspects of the proposed future work.

We were also recently granted a supplement to the project by the Ocean Drilling Program in order to bring you this web site.

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