The story of the Coastal Engineering Research Group (CERG) is one of growth and accruing influence. From its beginning in the 1980s, we now number 7 full-time academic staff, with numerous doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers. In fact, the size of the group has nearly tripled in the past three years. Members of CERG carry out both fundamental and applied research, funded from national and international sources. The group contains recognised specialists in field experimentation, instrument design and laboratory modelling, numerical modelling and theoretical analysis. Research grants and contracts now exceed £1m per year, over 40% of the total research funds raised by the faculty of Technology. We are the largest team of coastal engineering researchers in the UK, and arguably in Europe.

Professor Geoff Bullock established the group at the beginning of the 1980s, with research aimed at understanding wave impacts on traditional coastal engineering structures such as vertically-walled breakwaters. Professor Andrew Chadwick joined the group in 1993 and initiated research into the areas of nearshore wave measurement, coastal sediment transport and hydrodynamic modelling. By the turn of the millennium the group had 3 permanent and one temporary academic staff. Professor Dominic Reeve joined the group in 2004 and expanded the group’s interests to include flood risk, beach variability, long-term morphological modelling and analysis. By the end of 2006 the Group had grown to 7 full-time academic staff and over 20 research and research support staff. In 2006, the Group was also pleased to begin hosting the Plymouth Coastal Observatory, which is funded by the UK Government, and manages the collection of coastal data around the whole of the SW UK peninsula. Our increasing prominence is reflected in past and current housing of the offices of COZONE, the UK Coastal Zone Network, (initiated with funding from EPSRC), which acts as a focal point for more than 500 researchers and practitioners with an interest in coastal matters. The Group also hosts the European Network for Long-term coastal geo-morphological change as part of the EU funded ENCORA project.