POGO Alumnus:
NF-POGO Centre of Excellence 2009-2010
“The NF-POGO Centre of Excellence (CoE) scholar program is one of the best short academic programs I have ever attended. It was a great opportunity for me to be a part of this program during the 2009-2010 year group in Bermuda. In the first place, being one of ten scholars to be selected from around the globe to further study about the ocean gave me the confidence of how important this area of study is to the global community.”
Testimonial: NF-POGO Centre of Excellence (CoE) scholar
The NF-POGO Centre of Excellence (CoE) scholar program is one of the best short academic programs I have ever attended. It was a great opportunity for me to be a part of this program during the 2009-2010 year group in Bermuda. In the first place, being one of ten scholars to be selected from around the globe to further study about the ocean gave me the confidence of how important this area of study is to the global community. It was my first experience travelling outside my country to spend ten months studying ten different modules of rich courses and being among a group of ten brilliant scholars. It was an awesome, fulfilling, adventurous and educative experience. The courses studied, I believe, were carefully chosen to address current cross-cutting issues in the marine domain and were very well designed and well taught by professionals in the field to impact high level skills that made us dynamic in handling the ever dynamic ocean.
Participating in the NF-POGO CoE scholar program did not only enhance my knowledge and skills of the marine environment, it also afforded me the opportunity to network with, first of all, my colleague participants, then the tutors, and, other POGO scholars from different year groups from across the world. I continue to benefit from enormous resources that are shared by this network of scholars.
Ultimately, participating in the NF-POGO CoE scholar program has made it very easy for me to adapt myself to very different aspect of ocean monitoring. In my scientific carrier, I have initially been involved in biochemical aspects of the ocean (i.e. monitoring plankton, water quality and heavy/trace metals). In recent times I have been involved in the use of Earth Observation information to monitor and forecast ocean conditions with respect to ocean waves, currents and winds, and disseminating this information automatically to fishermen via Short Message Service (SMS) to support safety at sea. This forms part of the Marine Thema of the Monitoring for Environment and Security in Africa (MESA) project, which is sponsored by the European Union and executed by the University of Ghana for western Africa since 2014. I am also currently enrolled in a PhD program in Physical Oceanography at the University of Ghana and research into ocean waves along the West African coast and to generate a regional wave model and I look forward to developing further partnership with experts in this field. The skills acquired from the CoE scholar program has really helped in communicating science and to easily transfer skills to upcoming young scientists.