Community Engagement

A central goal of MERA is to engage and interact with the local Albany community, both through direct outreach and engagement and by providing expanded education and training opportunities in marine science and engineering. A major objective of MERA is to disseminate the knowledge gained through research to the wider community. Being based at UWA’s Albany campus, this will create new opportunities to integrate this research into UWA’s existing and planned curriculum. Presently Marine Science is one of the undergraduate majors offered through UWA’s Albany campus, with students remotely attending Perth-based lectures. With the establishment of MERA, expanded education opportunities will be available to Albany students with an interest in marine science (with Perth students attending remotely). This will also be the case for units that will be part of a new proposed UWA Oceans Graduate School Masters degree in Ocean Engineering. Albany-based graduates of these programs will directly feed back into MERA research activities (e.g. as PhD students/researchers), as well as into the private industry that develops and supports the commercial scale array of wave energy converters in Albany.