The NSF-MARGINS Panel comprises 10 individuals, on average, and the membership changes between each session. To avoid conflicts of interest, no member of the MARGINS Steering Committee (including the chair) is allowed to sit on the Panel, or even knows the composition of the Panel (until the subsequent steering committee meeting, months later). Following the NSF-MARGINS proposal deadline (November 1) the Panel convenes in February for its deliberations. The date of the Spring MARGINS Steering Committee meeting is selected only after proponents have been informed about the status of their proposal. Thus, no feedback can occur between the recommendations of the Panel and the deliberations of the MARGINS Steering Committee.

Continental margins are the Earth's principal loci for producing hydrocarbon and metal resources, for earthquake, landslide, volcanic and climatic hazards, and for the greatest population density. Despite the societal and economic importance of margins, many of the mechanical, fluid, chemical and biological processes that shape them are poorly understood. Progress is hindered by the sheer scope of the problems and by the space and time scales as well as the complexities of the processes. To overcome these obstacles, the earth science community has identified the outstanding scientific problems in continental margins research and the MARGINS Program is promoting research strategies that redirect traditional approaches to margin studies. In particular, the MARGINS Program will focus on the coordinated, interdisciplinary investigation of four fundamental initiatives; the Seismogenic Zone Experiment, the Subduction Factory, Rupturing Continental Lithosphere, and Sediment Dynamics and Strata Formation (Source to Sink). Each initiative is associated with two focus sites, research locations selected by the community to address the complete range of field, experimental and theoretical studies, over the full range of spatial and temporal scales needed to address fundamental questions associated with each initiative. The MARGINS Focus Sites are shown on this web page. The MARGINS Program is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and is driven by input from, and interaction with the earth science community: