4 early-career students have been chosen as Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellows, a two-year fellowship targeted on growing meals safety, lowering local weather dangers, accelerating vitality transitions, and advancing One Well being.
Sponsored by the Cornell Atkinson Middle for Sustainability since 2014, fellows select a analysis challenge, a Cornell college mentor and an advisor from a partnering exterior group. This system seeks to ahead sustainability objectives whereas offering skilled improvement, profession technique, communications coaching and collaborative management to promising younger students.
“We offer our postdoctoral fellows with the sources to win early-career success of their chosen self-discipline whereas studying to drive analysis efforts to large-scale affect,” stated David Lodge, the Francis J. DiSalvo Director of the Cornell Atkinson Middle for Sustainability. “As a result of efficiently addressing pressing sustainability challenges calls for management and engagement with people and organizations exterior the academy.”
Beth Fox, director of Postdoctoral and Scholar Packages for Cornell Atkinson, stated the postdoctoral fellows program has been a formative affect for a lot of fellows’ profession improvement, analysis, future partnerships and instructing.
“This fellowship is premised on the idea {that a} sustainable future requires the speedy transformation of analysis to impactful motion alongside a number of dimensions and throughout all institutional and profession frameworks, and that’s precisely what we hope to arrange our fellows to perform,” she stated.
The 2023 Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellows:
Kendra Kintzi, M.S.’19: Simply Energy: Centering Social Fairness in Southwest Asia’s Renewable Vitality Transition
From electrical energy protests in Jordan and Lebanon to the creation of renewable “good” cities in Saudi Arabia, the area of Southwest Asia is a website of radical vitality transformation. Kintzi, a Cornell Ph.D. candidate, will develop a comparative strategy to Southwest Asia’s renewable transition that may inform world analysis and activism, with a view to fostering equity-focused decarbonization coverage and observe.
Kintzi shall be mentored by Philip McMichael, professor emeritus of worldwide improvement and collaborate with Jerome Hodges, chief analysis officer on the Jain Family Institute, a non-profit analysis group targeted on piloting and implementing interventions to enhance human wellbeing.
Kintzi’s work seeks to handle the continued wrestle for social fairness and transition to renewable vitality in a area the place fossil fuels fund gross disparities in wealth and energy.
“In Southwest Asia, transborder mobilizations take form within the lengthy shadow of the Arab Spring and pose basic challenges to regional energy hierarchies,” she stated. “Given the dynamic complexity of the area’s interconnections, there’s an pressing want for approaches that transfer past the nation state to make connections between regional shifts in vitality manufacturing and place-based mobilizations for vitality justice.”
In collaboration with the Jain Household Institute, Kintzi will develop a collection of community-engaged workshops to allow radical collaboration and dialogue.
Divya Solomon: Capping Crop Burning By way of Synergies Between Conservation Agriculture and Carbon Credit
Solomon, a Ph.D. candidate on the College of Michigan, will assess the potential of the carbon credit score market in India to subsidize and speed up farmers’ adoption of sustainable practices akin to zero tillage, which enhance soil well being and mitigate local weather change.
Her mentor shall be Chris Barrett, the Stephen B. & Janice G. Ashley Professor of Utilized Economics and Administration and Worldwide Professor of Agriculture, and exterior advisor is Andrew McDonald ’94, M.S. ’98, Ph.D. ’03, technical guide for the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA).
Solomon’s challenge builds on ongoing work to know how sustainable intensification applied sciences can profit farmers’ livelihoods and decrease the unfavorable impacts of agriculture on the surroundings. She’s going to companion with CSISA to review whether or not providing farmers carbon credit for adopting renewable practices will deter farmers from burning crop residues. She may also map the results of adopting these applied sciences on family well-being to construct a holistic understanding of the impacts of sustainable intensification applied sciences.
“This examine will give insights into the effectiveness of technological and monetary improvements to nudge India’s agricultural pathway to a extra sustainable one whereas figuring out limitations to adoption and key leverage factors to extend social, financial and environmental advantages,” Solomon stated.
Margaret Swift: Simulating Sustainability by way of a One Well being Lens
A Ph.D. candidate at Duke College, Swift will discover how livestock fencing in southern Africa impacts the migration of untamed mammals, particularly elephants, and the way different livestock illness administration practices might shield each wild and home animals.
Her Cornell mentor is Steven Osofsky, D.V.M. ’89, the Jay Hyman Professor of Wildlife Well being & Well being Coverage and director of the Cornell Wildlife Well being Middle, and exterior advisor is Robin Naidoo, senior conservation scientist and lead wildlife scientist for the World Wildlife Fund.
Veterinary fencing crisscrosses a lot of southern Africa, defending livestock from contracting illnesses like foot and mouth from wild populations, however stopping wild mammals from migrating seasonally to entry grazing and water sources. Swift’s challenge will use superior laptop modeling to analyze how elephants at the moment transfer about southern Africa’s Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Space, the most important such panorama in Africa, and the way elephant motion patterns may change if different approaches to livestock illness administration much less dependent upon fencing have been adopted. By simulating migrations utilizing real-world elephant monitoring knowledge, potential eventualities for integrative, sustainable land-use administration develop into simpler to know and consider.
“As ecotourism revenues have begun to rival these of pastoralism on this space, conservation of enormous herbivores that form ecosystems and draw vacationers is essential,” Swift stated. “Consistent with the Cornell Atkinson One Well being theme, this challenge will highlight the sustainable advantages of optimizing land-use planning on the interface of wildlife, livestock, and human well being and livelihoods.”
Michael Vega: Results of Alternate Wetting and Drying on Biogeochemical Couplings between Nitrous Oxide Manufacturing and Inorganic Arsenic Mobilization in Rice Paddy Soils
Vega, who earned his Ph.D. final yr from the Colorado College of Mines, will examine easy methods to enhance rice farming sustainability by way of environmental engineering, geochemistry, and microbiology. Typical rice farming is water intensive, releases methane, and may end up in arsenic accumulation in rice, impacting meals safety in addition to local weather dangers. To reduce these results, alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a
not too long ago adopted irrigation methodology which decreases water use and methane manufacturing. Though profitable by these metrics, AWD can improve nitrous oxide emissions, a greenhouse fuel roughly 10 occasions stronger than methane, with restricted impact on inorganic arsenic accumulation in rice.
In collaboration with Cornell mentor Matt Reid, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and exterior companion Varunseelan Murugaiyan, postdoctoral researcher on the Worldwide Rice Analysis Institute, Vega will examine how AWD depth and fertilization timing might be managed to tell a sensible rice
farming technique that minimizes nitrous oxide and methane emissions, in addition to arsenic accumulation and water use.
“Being an Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow will allow interactions with researchers of numerous disciplines that can make my science extra well-rounded, and due to this fact extra societally related and impactful,” Vega stated. “The exterior collaboration part may also be crucial for my skilled development, and my partnership with the Worldwide Rice Analysis Institute will present a worldwide perspective and community that can improve my capability to conduct significant sustainability analysis all through my profession.”
