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Carolyn L. Ebrahimi
July 12, 2006
Nick Magliocca and Todd Myer, both seniors majoring in UCSD Environmental Systems, each won a $500 award from the San Diego Environmental Professionals (SDEP), for their outstanding senior internship projects.. The SDEP is a non-profit group dedicated to providing a forum for professionals in the environmental field. The award, now in its third year, was established by SDEP to promote academic interest and reward outstanding undergraduate academic achievement in the environmental sciences. Both seniors gave presentations of their respective projects at the June 13th SDEP meeting in San Diego last month.
“We believe it is important to recognize and support students in the environmental sciences so that they are better prepared for the challenges and issues they will confront after graduating,” says Jerome Jaminet, SDEP president. “Having been students ourselves at one time, we understand that even a small scholarship can make a big difference for a student just starting out his or her career.”
Nick Magliocca conducted his internship with Professor Brad Werner at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Nick’s research examined the complex interactions of wildfire, humans and development at the Urban-Wildlife Interface of the Los Angeles basin.
Nick conduced a great deal of background research and then designed a modeling study to incorporate various components including chaparral fire regime and ecology, Santa Ana wind events, current fire suppression practices and annual weather patterns for the LA Basin. Nick’s research and modeling results have policy implications, as the model could be integrated into larger models which also incorporate flood/landslide cycles, housing development trends, tax revenues, development permitting and policy.
Todd Myer served his internship in the Navy Facilities Southwest Division. His research work focused on the importance of environmental data and database management. Todd worked with the Naval Installation Restoration Information Solution (NRIS), the Naval Facilities Engineering Commands solution to managing environmental restoration program data.
Todd’s challenge was to “translate” Navy’s NIRIS database to report back in compliance with California’s geographic information system (GIS), GeoTracker, which provides online access to environmental regulatory data about underground fuel tanks, fuel pipelines, and public drinking water supplies. His work highlighted the importance of coordinating, mapping and sharing environmental data between and within various governmental and regulatory agencies.
Honorable Mentions were given to :
Rachel Basore, Using Web-Based Media to Communicate Environmental and Conservation Issues
Rachel worked as a student intern with Earthguide, a web-based educational resource in Earth and Environmental science for both students and teachers: Earthguide is an outreach project of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), comprised of a dynamic team of undergraduate students working with scientists and staff at SIO.
The Earthguide guiding principle is "good science that's easy to use and understand". As a dedicated student intern, Rachel contributed significantly to research, content writing, and image development on several Earthguide projects including “Earthguide’s Guide to the Solar System”, “Penguins”, “Carbon Fuels” and “The Carbon Cycle”. The results of her work can be found at http://earthguide.ucsd.edu. In her project and presentation, Rachel uses her experience with Earthguide and published research to provide a very interesting and insightful investigation on the potential of the web-based media to effectively communicate conservation issues.
Her analyses consider target audience age, location of the website, and reputation and recognition of the organization. Her results and suggestions are useful for continuing effectiveness of Earthguide, and also for evaluating communication of environmental and conservation issues with web-based media in general. Rachel gives a polished presentation that reflects her hard work and dedication to her project.
Mitch DeGeus, DNA sequence libraries and Marine Conservation Applications
Mitch interned in the marine biology laboratory of Prof. Ron Burton at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Mitch pioneered a genetic approach to investigating tuna diets. Mitch integrated genetic sequencing techniques and an expanding library of marine species DNA sequences to identify unknown pieces of fish in tuna stomachs. The information that Mitch gathered furthers information on the diet structure of tuna and, consequently, provides information on ecosystem requirements needed to evaluate fisheries management and protection strategies. Mitch gives an engaging presentation that, in addition to providing results and analyses, also chronicles his experiences with scientific research and discovery.
For more information on the Environmental Systems Program visit: http://esys.ucsd.edu.
More information on these and other student senior projects are at: http://esys.ucsd.edu/internship/internship_profiles.q_z.htm
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