Research, Education, and Public Service

International scientists and students across all scientific fields are invited to carry out programs at the University of California Berkeley's Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station. While the focus of the Gump Station is field-based scientific research and advanced training, activities in all academic disciplines are welcome.  Research spans levels of biocultural organization, addressing questions from molecule and microbe, through organismal and population biology, to anthropology, economics, and social sciences. 

Vision

Transdisciplnary science re-assembles the parts of a system studied by specialists to understand the functioning of the whole.  Moorea includes most of the complexity of larger regions (e.g., coupled marine and terrestrial environments; a diversified socio-economy of agriculture, industry, transport, and energy), but in a discrete geography and on a tractable scale for a whole system approach.  Furthermore, its archipelago setting enables comparison with other Polynesian islands that share common ancestry but differ in key parameters.

Mission

  • To promote research, education, and public service in global change science, tropical biocomplexity, and sustainable development.
  • To develop Moorea as a model system to understand how physical, biological, and cultural processes interact to shape tropical ecosystems, particularly coral reefs.

Administration

The Gump Station property in Moorea is owned by the Regents of the University of California and administered by the Berkeley campus through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.  The Station's Executive Director, Neil Davies, is a UC employee based permanently in Moorea reporting to the Vice Chancellor for Research, Graham Fleming, in Berkeley.

A faculty advisory committee from across the University of California system provides strategic guidance.  Current board members (appointed in 2007) include:

Funding

As of 2007, the University of California (through its Berkeley, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles campuses and Office of the President) provides part of the Station's operating budget.  The rest of the operating budget comes from user fees (recharge) and a grant from the National Geographic Society.

Management