MYRES is an educational and community building effort with the goal of fostering open, unbiased, interdisciplinary, and international collaboration between researchers in the Earth Sciences. The main component of MYRES is a series of biannual four day workshops targeted at the younger (less than 10 years post Ph.D.) members of the community with focus on solid Earth Sciences (geochemistry, geodynamics, geology, geophysics, mineralogy, petrology, seismology, rock physics). These workshops consist of peer-reviewed, comprehensive tutorials and focused discussion with the goal to bring specialists together to educate each other about constraints and possible solution strategies for an interdisciplinary research problem.

MYRES started through informal discussions among young scientists who recognized the need to facilitate community building. Though open discussions at various meeting in 2003, the project crystallized into a series of biannual topical conferences with an international, interdisciplinary, and unassuming flavor complemented by an online presence and forum. A steering committee composed of Thorsten Becker, Magali Billen, James Kellogg, Jeanne Hardebeck, Cin-Ty Lee, Laurent Montesi, Wendy Panero, Frederik Simons, and Shijie Zhong was formed. The first MYRES conference took place in august 2004 in La Jolla on the theme Heat, Helium, Hotspots, and Whole Mantle Convection". It was chaired by Thorsten Becker and James Kellogg.

The steering committee wrote a manifesto which expresses the goals and philosophy of MYRES. It was published in EOS Transactions AGU 85(16), 160, 2004. This document is accessible as PDF reprint.

Success of the first MYRES conference encouraged us to continue this project. Suggestions for the second workshop were advanced by several teams and discussed at fall AGU 2004 and EGU 2005 at town meetings. It was decided in particular to hold the second meeting in Europe to enhance the international aspect of MYRES. The MYRES community voted and selected the project "Dynamics of the Lithosphere" proposed by Laurent Montesi and Giulio Di Toro. This proposal was submitted to funding agencies. The meeting took place July 2-6, 2006 in Verbania, Italy.

Several members of the steering committee rotated out. The current meeting chairs and chairs of the previous meeting are automatically members of the steering committee. They are joined by four other young scientist. Currently, the steering committee is composed of Sofia Akber(UC San Diego), Thorsten Becker (USC), Magali Billen (UC Davis), Anne Deschamps (CNRS Brest), Giulio Di Toro (U. Padova), James Kellogg (UCLA), Laurent Montesi (WHOI), and Frederik Simons (University College London)

We hope that you will find this project interesting. Do not hesitate to sign up for the mailing list participate to the meetings and the forum, and contact us with any question or suggestion you may have.

On behalf of the MYRES community

Laurent and Giulio