Four UF faculty members studied the Gulf oil spill from four angles: tourism, ocean flow, marine ecosystems and the legal aspects of the oil spill cleanup.
The UF Alumni Association is hosting a panel of these four researchers today to discuss what UF is doing about the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The event, titled "An academic perspective on the Oil in the Gulf," will be held today at the Emerson Alumni Hall in Room 215 and is expected to last from noon until 1:30 p.m. It is open to the public. Each speaker will have 20 minutes to speak followed by a 15-minute Q-and-A session.
"The first goal was to make sure the speakers had very diverse backgrounds on the spill," said R.J. Stamper, an event spokesman. "The main purpose of the event is to show UF alumni and friends what the university is doing about the oil spill," he said.
Tourism professor Stephen Holland has done research on other disasters. He points out that while tourism decreases in some ways after disasters, it can also increase from people interested in seeing the disaster firsthand.
For example, surfers rush to the coast when a hurricane approaches, he said.
The other speakers are Tom Frazer, a marine ecology professor; Peter Sheng, a coastal engineering professor; and Thomas Ruppert, an environmental law assistant.
Frazer studies how the oil affects marine ecology. Sheng is researching how currents and climates affect the oil's movement. Ruppert works with Florida Sea Grant's post-disaster recovery planning.
"The important things to remember is that the effects of the oil spill are going to be potentially very long lasting," Frazer said.
