Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS)
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC), together with the original MASTS member institutions, invested approximately £75M between 2009-2016 in developing MASTS . MASTS (Phase I) was launched on 4th November 2009 in Edinburgh.
MASTS had the ambition to become an integral and important part of the national framework of excellence in marine science in Scotland and was awarded an additional five years of funding for MASTS Phase II. Modest funding is received from the SFC, but the majority of MASTS funding is now provided by contributions from its Member organisations. This second phase of funding will take us through until July 2022, but we continue to work hard to become self-supporting as an independent entity beyond the SFC funding period.
In 2019, MASTS developed and successfully formed the Scottish Universities Partnership For Environmental Research Doctoral Training Programme (SUPER DTP). The £5 million funding from UK NERC will fund between 60 and 90 PhD students over a 5 year period. The SUPER DTP complements the MASTS Graduate School which was launched in 2011.
This pooling of marine research talent has a constituency of more than 750 researchers with the management of resources consisting of over £66 million annually.
MASTS Partner Institutes shown on this database include:
University of Aberdeen
British Geological Survey (joined August 2017)
University of Dundee (joined March 2014)
University of Glasgow
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh Napier University
Heriot Watt University
Joint Nature Conservation Committee
University of the Highlands and Islands (encompassing SAMS, NAFC Marine Centre, Lews Castle College and the Environmental Research Institute)
Marine Scotland Science
NatureScot (joined June 2014)
Scottish Association for Marine Science
University of St Andrews
University of Stirling
University of Strathclyde
Scottish Environment Protection Agency
St Abbs Marine Station (joined June 2015)
University West of Scotland (joined June 2014)