The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative: a New Research Paradigm

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) was established to guide and administer the $500 million research fund committed by BP to understand the fate and effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Competitive research awards are made by an independent research board led peer-review process following the standards established by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation. The Board comprises twenty distinguished researchers with 10 members from around the world appointed by BP and 10 members from research universities in the Gulf region appointed by the Gulf of Mexico Alliance. The two main goals of GoMRI are: 1) to study the Deepwater Horizon incident and its associated impacts (and similar incidents), on the environment and public health, and 2) to develop improvements for spill mitigation, oil detection and new remediation technologies. Through public input, GoMRI identified five research themes: 1) physical distribution of contaminants, 2) chemical evolution and b...