Difference between revisions of "Slugs in Action"
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| + | [https://www.facebook.com/julieta.gomez.35 Julieta Gomez] (Marine Bio 2019) works for [https://healthebay.org/ Heal The Bay] | ||
[https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/09/stacy-jupiter-macarthur.html Stacy Jupiter, a marine scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology UCSC 2006, won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant"] for “extraordinary originality and dedication,” with a no-strings-attached award of $625,000. Jupiter, 43, lives in Fiji and works on conservation programs which work involves integrating local cultural practices. As a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz, Jupiter worked in northern Australia studying how coastal mangroves and coral reefs were affected by land use in a major watershed. | [https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/09/stacy-jupiter-macarthur.html Stacy Jupiter, a marine scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology UCSC 2006, won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant"] for “extraordinary originality and dedication,” with a no-strings-attached award of $625,000. Jupiter, 43, lives in Fiji and works on conservation programs which work involves integrating local cultural practices. As a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz, Jupiter worked in northern Australia studying how coastal mangroves and coral reefs were affected by land use in a major watershed. | ||
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[http://sociology.ucsc.edu/directory/details.php?id=5 Melanie DuPuis] is the author of the book [http://www.ucsc.edu/currents/01-02/02-04/milk.html ''Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink'' ] (McHenry GT2920.M55 D86 2002) and numerous scholarly articles on food and food-related topics. She is currently co-editor of an issue of the current special "politics of food" issue of [http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=1550 ''Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture''] | [http://sociology.ucsc.edu/directory/details.php?id=5 Melanie DuPuis] is the author of the book [http://www.ucsc.edu/currents/01-02/02-04/milk.html ''Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink'' ] (McHenry GT2920.M55 D86 2002) and numerous scholarly articles on food and food-related topics. She is currently co-editor of an issue of the current special "politics of food" issue of [http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=1550 ''Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture''] | ||
| − | [http://http://www.coastalresearchcenter.ucsb.edu/cmi/Estes.html James Estes] and John Terborgh in a new book explore the importance of predators in ''[http://islandpress.org/bookstore/details9b93.html Trophic Cascades]: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature''. They explain how top predators play an essential role in maintaining ecosystem well-being, and how this natural regulatory system is often drastically disrupted by human interventions-when wolves and cougars are removed, for example, populations of deer and beaver become destructive. [http://www.cfr.washington.edu/classes.esrm.450/Estes2011.pdf classic but accessible essay on trophic cascades] with [http://www.michaelsoule.com/ Soule] et al (see below). Important work on [http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_21527428/ sea otters and climate change] (see Wilmers). | + | [http://http://www.coastalresearchcenter.ucsb.edu/cmi/Estes.html James Estes] and John Terborgh in a new book explore the importance of predators in ''[http://islandpress.org/bookstore/details9b93.html Trophic Cascades]: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature''. They explain how top predators play an essential role in maintaining ecosystem well-being, and how this natural regulatory system is often drastically disrupted by human interventions-when wolves and cougars are removed, for example, populations of deer and beaver become destructive. [http://www.cfr.washington.edu/classes.esrm.450/Estes2011.pdf classic but accessible essay on trophic cascades] with [http://www.michaelsoule.com/ Soule] et al (see below). Important work on [http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_21527428/ sea otters and climate change] (see Wilmers). [https://www.KSQD.org Sustainability Now!] Sunday, March 7th, 2021, from 5-6 PM, on KSQD, 90.7 FM and KSQD.org. The southern sea otter is a keystone species in kelp forest communities, acting to increase the species diversity and providing ecosystem services. Despite federal protection since 1977, the southern sea otter population has struggled to recover and there are only an estimated 2,800 sea otters in California. Listen to a conversation with Dr. James Estes, Emeritus Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. Estes is author of Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand Nature and appears in “The Serengeti Rules,” a 2019 film about “five unsung heroes of modern ecology,” of which he is one. Of course, Jim is best known for his research on California sea otters, once almost wiped out, then recovered and now again threatened by marine toxins, diseases, orcas and agricultural chemical runoff. The broadcasts of Sustainability Now! are archived at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify. |
[https://rca.ucsc.edu/directors-initiatives/human-rights-lab/index.html Sylvanna Falcón], a professor of Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) and a human rights researcher: [https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/10/falcon-humanrights.html New Human Rights Lab trains students to investigate wrongdoing. Students use high-tech sleuthing tools to help hold perpetrators accountable. Indigenous environmental activists such a [https://rachelcarson-wiki.lt.ucsc.edu/mediawiki/index.php?title=Eco-heroes&action=edit§ion=4 Berta Caseres] are frequent targets. 10/19 | [https://rca.ucsc.edu/directors-initiatives/human-rights-lab/index.html Sylvanna Falcón], a professor of Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) and a human rights researcher: [https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/10/falcon-humanrights.html New Human Rights Lab trains students to investigate wrongdoing. Students use high-tech sleuthing tools to help hold perpetrators accountable. Indigenous environmental activists such a [https://rachelcarson-wiki.lt.ucsc.edu/mediawiki/index.php?title=Eco-heroes&action=edit§ion=4 Berta Caseres] are frequent targets. 10/19 | ||
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[http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb5g50061q&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00022&toc.depth=1&toc.id= Richard Cooley] founded the Environmental Studies department and was important in protecting the polar bear and Alaska wilderness, and [http://digitalcollections.ucsc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p265101coll13/id/3376 funded Rachel Carson] so she could finish ''Silent Spring''. | [http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb5g50061q&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00022&toc.depth=1&toc.id= Richard Cooley] founded the Environmental Studies department and was important in protecting the polar bear and Alaska wilderness, and [http://digitalcollections.ucsc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p265101coll13/id/3376 funded Rachel Carson] so she could finish ''Silent Spring''. | ||
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| + | [https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/04/crow-obituary.html Ben Crow] studied inequality around water and land issues. Before becoming a social scientist, Professor Ben Crow trained and worked as an engineer in London and Africa, and was an activist and volunteer in South Asia. His PhD is from Edinburgh University in Scotland, and he also taught at the Open University in the UK and at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Author of, among others, The Atlas of Global Inequalities, with Suresh Lodha). More about Professor Crow’s work can be found at: [https://bcrow.sites.ucsc.edu/research/ link]. | ||
[http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/dasmann Ray Dasmann] was one of the pioneers in developing the the conservation concepts of "eco-development," and "biological diversity," and identified the crucial importance of recognizing indigenous peoples and their cultures in efforts to conserve natural landscapes. These concepts over the last thirty years have coalesced in American and international environmental thinking as "sustainable development," the key dynamic concept informing contemporary conservation efforts. Dasmann pleaded to grant legal rights to Nature nearly half a century ago, and it has been the subject of numerous "deep ecology" and some law articles and books [http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/3098 Article]. A [http://www.planetdrum.org/ray_dasmann.htm remembrance]. [https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-714 SlugMap]. | [http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/dasmann Ray Dasmann] was one of the pioneers in developing the the conservation concepts of "eco-development," and "biological diversity," and identified the crucial importance of recognizing indigenous peoples and their cultures in efforts to conserve natural landscapes. These concepts over the last thirty years have coalesced in American and international environmental thinking as "sustainable development," the key dynamic concept informing contemporary conservation efforts. Dasmann pleaded to grant legal rights to Nature nearly half a century ago, and it has been the subject of numerous "deep ecology" and some law articles and books [http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/3098 Article]. A [http://www.planetdrum.org/ray_dasmann.htm remembrance]. [https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-714 SlugMap]. | ||
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[http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/archive/99-00/01-00/norris_legacy.htm Ken Norris], cetologist who helped establish Natural Reserves and Long Marine Lab [http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/norris.html oral history] online and in Science Library QH31.N67 J37 1999. "His pioneering | [http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/archive/99-00/01-00/norris_legacy.htm Ken Norris], cetologist who helped establish Natural Reserves and Long Marine Lab [http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/norris.html oral history] online and in Science Library QH31.N67 J37 1999. "His pioneering | ||
investigations in marine mammalogy confirmed dolphin echolocation skills in a series of elegant experiments. Much of what is now known about whales and dolphins, specifically their social and familial interactions is due to his work. His expertise in marine mammalogy also resulted in his strong influence on public policy in the crafting of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. His leadership and research were also instrumental in the national campaign to reduce the dolphin kill in tuna fishing. Norris was the author of over a hundred scientific papers and several books on dolphins and porpoises." | investigations in marine mammalogy confirmed dolphin echolocation skills in a series of elegant experiments. Much of what is now known about whales and dolphins, specifically their social and familial interactions is due to his work. His expertise in marine mammalogy also resulted in his strong influence on public policy in the crafting of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. His leadership and research were also instrumental in the national campaign to reduce the dolphin kill in tuna fishing. Norris was the author of over a hundred scientific papers and several books on dolphins and porpoises." | ||
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| + | Maya Karin Peterson, beloved professor of history and friend to many in the UCSC community, died unexpectedly in childbirth alongside her daughter, Priya Luna. Her research engaged questions of health, the environment, and the transnational histories of science and technology in the modern era. Her first monograph, Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia (Cambridge UP, 2019), was a finalist for the Central Eurasian Studies Society’s Award for Best Book in History. She played an outsized role in departmental and university leadership for an emerging scholar, chairing an interdisciplinary faculty search for SEACoast – UCSC's Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions – and helping to reinvigorate UC Santa Cruz's Center for World History. The Humanities Division has established The Maya K. Peterson Memorial Fund. | ||
[http://news.ucsc.edu/2012/11/don-rothman-remembered.html Don Rothman]: Avoiding the Humiliation of Silence in the Face of Cruelty and Injustice.[http://ic.ucsc.edu/videoarchive/special_events/don_rothman-10-11-2011.mov VIDEO (.mov download)]. Many students said his talk was a highlight of the Core course. Sadly, Don [http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_22101885/retired-ucsc-faculty-member-dies-don-rothman-remembered passed away] in his sleep in early December 2012; he will be much missed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsDW_M-NdtY Don hosts a dynamic discussion] with Oakes College founding provost and emeritus Professor J. Herman Blake (2012). | [http://news.ucsc.edu/2012/11/don-rothman-remembered.html Don Rothman]: Avoiding the Humiliation of Silence in the Face of Cruelty and Injustice.[http://ic.ucsc.edu/videoarchive/special_events/don_rothman-10-11-2011.mov VIDEO (.mov download)]. Many students said his talk was a highlight of the Core course. Sadly, Don [http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_22101885/retired-ucsc-faculty-member-dies-don-rothman-remembered passed away] in his sleep in early December 2012; he will be much missed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsDW_M-NdtY Don hosts a dynamic discussion] with Oakes College founding provost and emeritus Professor J. Herman Blake (2012). | ||
Latest revision as of 14:57, 25 June 2021
See also green UCSC departments, as well as Eco-heroes and Activism and Entrepreneurship.
Note: new content will be in gold font
The University of California Is Dumping Fossil Fuel Investments Whoohoo, huge win! (City on a Hill story), (2016 video of Carson College talk). To see why see Bill McKibben, who pioneered divestment with 7 of his college students who created 350.org.
UC Santa Cruz among greenest universities in Sierra Club ranking 8/16.
Overview: UCSC's greatest hits]
Alumni
Julieta Gomez (Marine Bio 2019) works for Heal The Bay
Stacy Jupiter, a marine scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology UCSC 2006, won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" for “extraordinary originality and dedication,” with a no-strings-attached award of $625,000. Jupiter, 43, lives in Fiji and works on conservation programs which work involves integrating local cultural practices. As a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz, Jupiter worked in northern Australia studying how coastal mangroves and coral reefs were affected by land use in a major watershed.
Zachary Cissna is Environmental Outreach Manager at GreenWaste of Palo Alto,LEED. 4/19
UCSC startup weekend event organizer Tom Beckett (Kresge 2013)works for a Santa Cruz biotech startup and as a Kickstarter funding consultant. 11/16.
Peter Cook et al. find Sea lions exposed to algal toxin show impaired spatial memory: Permanent neurological and behavioral changes caused by the neurotoxin domoic acid may affect sea lions' ability to survive in the wild 12/15.
Sea turtles have been around for about 110 million years, but climate change is causing trouble by threatening their nests and decreasing the number of potential male mates. NewsHour science producer Nsikan Akpan (Slug) investigates in PBS series, The Wild Side of Sea Level Rise.
Environmental Studies Alums with map. Michael Geneau, ’11, has had a few different environmental jobs since graduating. He work as a contracting biologist on the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generation Facility, and then worked at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy. Most recently he worked for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center. Kathlyn Franco (2012) since graduation she has worked at SAVE THE FROGS! It is a local nonprofit dedicated to amphibian conservation. She is now the SAVE THE FROGS! Education Coordinator and hopes to get more students involved in amphibian conservation. During the summer she is hired by the US Forest Service to conduct small mammal surveys at the Stanislaus Experimental Forest in the Sierras.
Grant Marr, '11 writes “since I did my senior paper (for Tim Duane's class) about distributed generation solar energy, I decided to look into solar jobs after graduating. Now I am working at Sungevity, a residential solar company based in Oakland that has been expanding like crazy in the last couple of years. I didn't think I would want to join a sales team, but it is a really fun work environment!”
Social Entrepreners: Janneke Lang Social Entrepreneurship UCSC alum, organized Cruz Cares Pitch competition ($10K). Civinomics is a technology start-up based in Santa Cruz, founded in 2011 by UCSC GenY-ers who are passionate about being involved in their government and social institutions and making them better, includes Kelsey Grimsley (Obama, Waxman, Farr, Ban-the-Bag) and Robert Singleton (the SMART commuter train, urban sprawl Slug alum). Rob Forbes (aesthetic studies from Porter 1974). PUBLIC urban bike design company; every bike he sells is a consumer good and a purchase for the public good.
Skye Leone, Dean Alper, John Razz Cohn, Eric Dazey, Michael Freund, Ken Hart, David Paul, and Glen Price formed Friends Foundation International which gives micro-grants. They are a group of UCSC alumni who were so inspired by a single class they shared in 1975 that they've spent the last 20-plus years funding environmental and social projects around the world (nearly $200K). More.
Orson Aguilar ('96 C8) in his role at the helm of the Greenlining Institute, focuses on private and public policies that promote investments and equity in low-income and minority communities like East Los Angeles where he grew up. Prior to the Greenlining Institute, he was a fellow with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. He recently testified before Congress.
Bill Allayaud is California Director of Governmental Affairs for EWG. Formerly analyst with the California Coastal Commission; urban planner, state director of Sierra Club California with particular expertise in water quality and supply, land use planning, and conservation of forests, farmland, and wetlands.
Robert Aston President at Ocean Presence Technologies: This sysyem is capable of being viewed and controlled over the Internet and permits continuous monitoring of underwater sites without the influence of divers. Biologists around the world will be able to access cameras as part of their work to understand and conserve our oceans. "Telepresence" is the experience of being fully present at a live, real world location at a distance from one's own physical location. Someone experiencing telepresence would therefore be able to behave, and receive stimuli, as though at the remote site. This new technology will dramatically increase our ability to educate people on need for ocean conservation. See Ocean.
Kenny Baker (Kresge '07, cultural anthropology and environmental studies), who started Lonely Mountain Farm, sells in Bay Area farmers' markets.
Miguel Aznar, Executive Director at KnowledgeContext, nanotechnology.
Tony Bautista, a CUIP intern, worked on green issues like climate change.
Lisa Belenky, Senior Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, works on protecting rare and endangered species and their habitats under state and federal law. Lisa holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law and a bachelor’s in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Gena Bentall studies sea otters with USGS.
Peter Berg, founder of PlanetDrum Envisioning Sustainability
Maxwell Boykoff has worked in North America, Central America, South Asia and Europe. He was a Peace Corps volunteer when Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras, where he continued to work for a week before being evacuated by helicopter. This sparked his research in climate change policy at UCSC,the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, Colorado-Boulder Environmental Change Institute (ECI) as well as the Oxford University Centre for the Environment. He co-authored an important study on how press misrepresented climate change.
Cassandra Brooks is a PhD student with the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University who is studying international ocean policy, particularly focusing on marine protection in the Antarctic. She is currently blogging from a National Science Foundation research cruise in the Ross Sea, Antarctica.video her National Geographic blog. See Arctic page
Shannon Brownlee (College Eight, biology ’79) is a nationally known writer and essayist whose book, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer was named the best economics book of 2007 by the New York Times. Recent Atlantic article Link
Martin Case (business management economics, '08) will soon join the Banana Slug tradition of service. Case departs June 1 to train for a two-year assignment in Cameroon. He will work in small business development. Case says he is drawn to the Peace Corps to for a "grasp of the bigger picture of world economics through hands-on experience." An active member of his community, Case sang opera at UCSC and volunteers at Santa Cruz's Homeless Garden Project and the Resource Center for Nonviolence. With 47 alumni in service, UC Santa Cruz ranks No. 21 on the annual list of "Peace Corps Top Colleges and Universities," released last week.
Jim Cochrane, founder of Swanton Berry Farm, famous as the first certified organic farm in the United States to sign a labor contract with the United Farm Workers (UFW). Swanton Berry Farm offers their workers low income housing on site, health insurance, vacation and holiday pay, a pension, and other benefits including an employee stock ownership program. Interview part of McHenry Library oral history of central coast green pioneers in agriculture. 2011 update.
Joseph Collins' (MRL '73) teenage experiences volunteering in Latin America and the Philippines four decades ago led to a lifetime researching, writing and lecturing on the impact of U.S. policies and institutions on the lives of the world's poor majority. He is the co-founder of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), a Guggenheim Fellow recognized for his work on issues of inequitable development, and has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California. His books include Food First, World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Chile's Free-Market Miracle: A Second Look, and Aid As Obstacle. Collins is a consultant in Africa, Asia and Latin America to the United Nations and international NGOs. He currently co-directs the program on the Development Context of AIDS of the United Nations Research Institute in Social Development (UNRISD). Together with his boyfriends, he lives and surfs (big) waves in Santa Cruz, California. book on Peace Corps.
Steve Collins (Porter '85, physics and theater arts) guided the Mars Rover. Besides his work at the Jet Propulsion Lab, he is a dancer/ choreographer, a soccer player, an autocross racer and a musician in an indie-rock band. "I'm curious about things in a cross-disciplinary way," he said simply. His adviser allowed him to do a rather unorthodox senior thesis on orbital rendezvous, which required him to learn computer programming. "He was very self-motivated to do unusual things, and to do them well," Scott said of Collins. His job as an "attitude control" engineer is to keep spacecraft pointed in the right direction, perform trajectory corrections, and figure out "what the heck just happened," he said. On the Deep Space One project, for instance, Collins helped fly the revolutionary, ion-propelled spacecraft toward the comet Borrelly. On the way, however, the spacecraft's star-tracker instrument failed, basically blinding those guiding it. Over the next months, Collins and five others cobbled together a way to successfully fly the craft without the crucial sensor. During his career, Collins has helped deliver twin rovers to the surface of Mars, capture spectacular photos of Jupiter and its moons, send a spacecraft on a flyby of the Hartley-2 comet, and pilot the rover, Curiosity, to Mars with an innovative "sky-crane" landing system that allows spacecraft to settle in smaller and more discovery-rich areas.
Wesley Colvin Deputy Director of Ecological Services at New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
Brent Constantz developed technology to make "green" cement that could help slow global warming and ocean acidification based on a revolutionary product for healing broken bones inspired by the research on coral reefs he had conducted as a UCSC graduate student.
Brooke Crowley, now an assistant professor of anthropology and geology at the University of Cincinnati, conducted the study of lemurs in Madagascar for her doctoral thesis at UC Santa Cruz, where she earned a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology (as well as master's degrees in Earth sciences and anthropology).
Justin Cummings earned his Ph.D. at UCSC in ecology and evolutionary biology and completed undergraduate degrees in Spanish and biology. director new Conservation Scholars Program will partner with other organizations including Santa Cruz-based SACNAS: Advancing Chicano/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science. 11/15.
Kevin T. Dann, College Eight '79 Traces on the Appalachians: A Natural History of Serpentine in Eastern North America, Rutgers University Press, 1988
Kevin Danaher Co-founder of Global Exchange (trips) and internships) and an expert on globalization and green economy, co-author of the book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots. (video interview) He often writes for Alternet.
Sheila Davis is Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, which has played a valuable role in shaping environmental policy in the high-tech industry. Her research, advocacy and policy development led to a successful ban on hazardous electronic waste (e-waste) from the California municipal landfills and the subsequent passage of the first electronic recycling legislation in the nation. Sheila holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of California and served as a journalist, state legislative aide and community development specialist before joining the staff of SVTC.
Sean Vidal Edgerton (2011) B.S. Evolution & Ecology and Plant Sciences uses his art to illustrate nature.
Joseph DeRisi (Crown '92, B.A. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) has been called a "virus detective", a "scientific polymath", and a "rock star of the science world." A UCSF Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, he gained international attention in 2003 when his laboratory deployed its state-of-the-art "gene chip" to identify the unique "coronavirus" that caused the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. DeRisi led the development of the microarray, wrote its software, and even built the robot that imprints it. One of his career goals is to find a cure for malaria; his research may help battle cancer and even the common cold. His lab has also been looking at bee disease. TEDtalk video.
Cristina Diaz began at the Universidad Central de Venezuela , then PhD at UCSC, specializing in studying, identifying and classifying intertidal and tropical sponges.She works with Save Our Shores, leading groups of school children on beach cleanups and tours in Santa Cruz. Christina Diaz is one of a handful of experts in the world specializing in studying, identifying and classifying intertidal and tropical sponges. (video).
Brock Dolman (College Eight '92, Environmental Studies/Biology), Director of The WATER Institute Ecologist Permaculture Program. Bioneers interview video. Bio TEDx video: Watershed City 2.0 (Re-thinking and Retrofitting for Resilience).
Rob Forbes (aesthetic studies from Porter 1974). PUBLIC urban bike design company; every bike he sells is a consumer good and a purchase for the public good.
John Francis, vice president of research, conservation, and exploration for the National Geographic Society works with Crittercam.
Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a Sundance award winning film about migration, Sin Nombre. Interview.
Patty Fung works in a school garden.
Dawn Gable holds a double BA in Environmental Studies and Biology from UCSC. She spent 2+ years living and working as a field ornithologist in Venezuela where she became acquainted with the Bolivarian Revolution and the Chavez program as well as with Venezuelan culture. The coup attempt of April 11, 2002 that mobilized the Chavez supporting majority, catalyzed her involvement in the movement as well. Dawn is the founder of the International Bolivarian Circle: Cyber-Solidarity, the co-creator and co-manager of the Bolivarian Circles official website. She has been instrumental in organizing internships with Venezuela NGOs for US university students and cooperates with Global Exchange Venezuela programs and is a member of the Santa Cruz Cuba Study Group.
Tim Galarneau was recently profiled in Mother Jones news on sustainable food. A leader in student food movement. video
John Gamman literally wrote the book on environmental mediation. Overcoming Obstacles in Environmental Policymaking: Creating Partnerships Through Mediation, State U. of New York Press, 1994
Laurie Ann Garrett, Merrill '75. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994. Betrayal of Trust: the Collapse of Global Public Health, Hyperion, 2000 NPR interview 2009 on swine flu.
Drew Goodman (College 8), organic farmer.
Randall Grahm, founder of Bonny Doon Vineyard, is a legend in the U.S. wine industry for his biodynamically produced, adventurous wines. He was influenced by systemic meta-thinkers Gregory Bateson and Norman O. Brown at UCSC.
UCSC alum Reyna Grande has written two acclaimed novels about the Mexican immigrant experience, her new memoir--The Distance Between Us.
Nina Grove, formerly of Genentech, works on malaria in Africa.
Victor Davis Hanson (Cowell '75, B.A. in Classic Literature) has attracted scholarly as well as public attention for his provocative perspectives on the demise of the family farm, the humanities and their place in the intellectual health of the nation, military history, and the global role of the United States. Hanson received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University, and has been a professor of Classical Studies in the School of the Arts and Humanities at CSU Fresno for 12 years. He operates his family's raisin farm in the San Joaquin Valley. The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer, Free Press, 2000. ISBN 0-684-84501-6. The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0-02-913751-9 Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea, Free Press, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82299-7.
Richard Harris covers science and environmental issues for National Public Radio. updatealso video biography
Shawn Harrison, a 1997 graduate of the CASFS Apprenticehip, is helping develop a new local food system project in Sacramento.
Jennifer Helfrich, a recent graduate of UCSC, developed and installed dashboard technology at various residential halls across campus. This dashboard technology will monitor energy efficiency and translate it into tangible terms to be displayed in selected dining halls. This will spread awareness and foster sustainable behavior for campus residents. More.
Dan Heller (College 8, 1985, computer and information sciences), founder and executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship (C4E), a cross-disciplinary program with UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering and economics department. It has a business design competition ($10K).
Laura Helmuth (’98) formerly associate news editor at Science Magazine; current job: senior science editor at Smithsonian.
Marc Robert Herman, Oakes '91. Searching for El Dorado: A journey into the South American Rainforest on then Trail of the World's Largest Gold Rush, Doubleday, 2003.
Dan Haifley, Executive Director O’Neill Sea Odyssey since 1999, publishes a weekly column, has received recognition from the California State Senate, State Assembly, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments and the City of Santa Cruz for his efforts to establish the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, promote 26 California local ordinances regarding offshore oil and protect California’s coastline and received the 2011 Ocean Hero Award from Save Our Shores.
Eric Holt-Gimenez Executive Director at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. See Food.
Carol Howard (’85)author of Dolphin Chronicles (Bantam, 1996) a popular account of her graduate work with dolphins. Current job: science writer and communications coordinator for the Johns Hopkins University Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing.
Brad Keitt is director of Island Conservancy, which grew out of pioneering work by UCSC's Don Croll and Bernie Tershy.
Jim Kent played a crucial role (with UCSC's David Haussler) in sequencing the human genome. Kent created the UCSC Genome Browser, an open-source, web-based tool now used by biomedical researchers throughout the world. (NYT Article) and Metroactive.
Michael Levitin (Cowell, '98, history), a freelance journalist, has helped pull together five issues of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, a printed newspaper and web site that chronicles the occupy movement.
The Kitchen Sisters(Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) are producers of the duPont-Columbia Award-winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, and the two Peabody Award-winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project. Their current project is The Hidden World of Girls, a year-long series on NPR exploring the lives of girls and the women they become.
Melissa Ng of San Jose is the next to join this Banana Slug tradition of Peace Corps service. The 2009 UCSC grad departs in March to begin a Peace Corps assignment in Belize. She will serve 27 months as an advisor to nongovernmental organizations in the Central American country. UC Santa Cruz ranks 6th on Peace Corps's 2011 rankings of the top volunteer-producing colleges and universities (medium-size schools category). 51 UCSC undergraduate alumni, up from last year's 46.
Mason Inman (’04) Winner of a 2008-09 Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism to report on the monsoon floods in Bangladesh. Link
Teresa Ish helps consumers find sustainable fish.
John Jeavons worked with pioneer organic gardener Chadwick (see below) and founded Ecology Action, which now has partners all over the world. Article "The Man Who Would Feed the World"
Charity Kenyon, 1974 "a Sacramento lawyer emphasizing protection of freedoms of speech and press for over 30 years.... also prosecutes environmental law cases on behalf of petitioners... [including]in the Central Valley... More recently I have been active with food justice and security issues and am heading up a Slow Food Sacramento Committee working to highlight hunger in Sacramento, advocate for a meaningful urban agricultural policy, and showcase the work of our urban farmers."
Sora Kim, now at the University of Wyoming, did a study that shows surprising variability in the dietary preferences of individual white sharks.
John Laird, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, is a UCSC alumnus and former three-term member of the state Assembly, who authored 82 bills that were signed into law, including the landmark Sierra Nevada Conservancy and significantly expanded water conservation. Most recently, he taught state environmental policy at University of California Santa Cruz (a senior seminar in environmental studies, "Methods in Environmental Policy Analysis").
Osprey Orielle Lake, College 8, is a lifelong advocate of environmental justice and societal transformation, Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus, on the governing Board of Praxis Peace Institute and an advisor to the International Eco-Cities Standards initiative. Osprey has traveled to five continents studying ancient and modern cultures while making presentations at international conferences and universities. She is the Founder/Artist of the International Cheemah Monument Project, creating 18 foot bronze sculpture monuments for locations around the world.
Patricia Limerick (Cowell '72, American studies), and her Ph.D. from Yale, is the chairof the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she is also a professor of environmental studies and history. She is the author of Desert Passages, The Legacy of Conquest, Something in the Soil, and A Ditch in Time.
Mark Lipson (MRL '81) helped bring organic labeling policy to the nation 8/15
Miriam Landman, 1995, is an environmental writer, editor, and advisor with expertise in green building and sustainability. She is the owner of M. Landman Communications & Consulting (www.MLandman.com), and she publishes The Green Spotlight weblog. In the past, she was a producer and reporter for the national public radio program Living on Earth. She was a contributing author for the book Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing (Island Press, 2007). Miriam has a master's degree in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University.
Frans Lanting presents The LIFE Project, a collection that tells the story of our planet, from its eruptive beginnings to its present diversity. Hoping for a glimpse of the world the way it was in the age of photosynthesizing stromatolites, "back before the sky turned blue," Lanting journeyed to a remote lagoon in Australia, the only place in the world where stromatolites still exist. The story moves forward from there, via a lyrical collection of photographs set to a soundtrack from Philip Glass. TEDtalk video.
Rebecca Lawton was one of the first women river guides in the West. For millions of Americans and foreign visitors who have navigated America's great rivers by raft or boat - and for those who wish they could - this book will help them understand rivers and their impact on the human emotional landscape in a deeper sense. It offers such seekers, not only the thrill rides and vacation destinations of our rivers - but also their rich ecosystems and spiritual wellsprings.
Taal Levi discovered a continued increase of Lyme disease in the United States, once linked to a recovering deer population, may instead be explained by a decline of the red fox, along with his UCSC co-authors, A. Marm Kilpatrick, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology; Marc Mangel, distinguished professor in applied mathematics and statistics; and Chris Wilmers (see below).
Lopez, Anna A , who obtained her PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz, wrote The Farmworkers' Journey brings together for the first time the many facets of this issue into a comprehensive and accessible narrative: how corporate agribusiness operates, how binational institutions and laws promote the subjugation of Mexican farmworkers, how migration affects family life, how genetically modified corn strains pouring into Mexico from the United States are affecting farmers, how migrants face exploitation from employers, and more. (also Google book). She now runs Center for Farmworker Families based in Felton. See Environmental Justice.
Community Studies graduate Jen Lopez ('07) talking about her career and working as a line producer with The Yes Men on their recent movie. video interview.
Bruce Lyon uncovers "Soap opera in the marsh": Coots foil nest invaders, reject impostors.
Deborah Madison was the founding chef of the legendary Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, one of the earliest restaurants to have a farm-driven menu. She is the author of 10 highly acclaimed cookbooks. She worked with food pioneer Alan Chadwick (see below).
Ernestine Louise McHugh, Kresge '76. Love and Honor in the Himalayas: Coming to Know Another Culture, U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Sean McStay Reserve Steward at University of California Natural Reserve System.
Andrew Mersmann wrote Frommer's 500 Places Where You Can Make a Difference see Google booksand audio and text interview. His blog is changebydoing.com/
Basho Mosko, 1999 - is currently the Program Manager for the Flip Video Spotlight Program. Flip Video Spotlight is the charitable outreach of Flip Video and our mission is to help nonprofits and charitable organizations share the stories of their work through video. We provide a deep discount on camcorders, and I work daily with organizations ranging from the World Food Programme and Witness to local chapters of Habitat for Humanity and Kiva, to help them leverage the power of video to support their programs. In addition, I have been volunteering at Kiva for over a year to deepen their use of video on the website and help lenders feel more connected to the entrepreneurs they are lending to.
Dustin Mulvaney, received a doctoral degree in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He previously worked as the engineering group leader for a venture capital start-up that designed and produced environmental remediation technology, as well as for a Fortune 500 specialty chemical manufacturer as a process engineer. His research and consulting experience includes policy analysis in alternative energy and agrifood systems, life cycle assessment (LCA), and projects that utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Formerly College 8 faculty. Dustin Mulvaney is now Senior Research Scientist & Switzer Environmental Leadership Fellow at Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
Ana Maria Murillo served as Executive Director for the U’wa Defense Project, founded by Terry Freitas, UCSC alum killed in Columbia. Ana is of Indigenous Colombian ancestry and has worked for twelve years with Native communities in the U.S. and Latin America, primarily in Indigenous-led community development, cultural survival and women’s rights. Ana currently serves on the board of Amazon Watch and also volunteers as Co-Director for the Mujer U’wa Initiative; a giving circle supporting Indigenous U’wa women in the jungles of Colombia to build female leadership, resist destructive petroleum extraction and contribute to peace building amid a war zone in their sacred land.
Roberto Nájera (Merrill '79, B.A. in Sociology, a graduate of Harvard Law School, is the child of a widowed farmworker, and spent much of his childhood picking vegetables on the Monterey coast. Now a Contra Costa County deputy public defender, Nájera was an unlikely choice to argue a case before the Supreme Court, where those who actively represent indigent clients are rarely seen. Nájera successfully argued that a California law unconstitutionally deprived his client's right to due process, thereby setting free many individuals who had been unconstitutionally convicted.
Melissa Nelson serves as the executive director and president of The Cultural Conservancy, an indigenous rights non-profit organization based in San Francisco, Native Land.
Nell Newman, Founder of Newman's Own Organics and Santa Cruz local interviewed by Josh Kornbluth (iTunes podcast video)Grist interview 2004
Julie Packard, Executive Director, Monterey Bay Aquarium, which Julie Packard helped found and has led as executive director since it opened 20 years ago, is among the world’s most popular attractions. A recent national survey ranked it the best aquarium and one of the top family destinations of any kind, ahead of Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo.
Joe Palca is a science correspondent for National Public Radio. Palca began his journalism career in television, then left television for a seven-year stint as a print journalist, first as the Washington news editor for Nature, and then as a senior correspondent for Science Magazine. Example: Scientists Probe 'Glue' That Keeps Oysters Together.
Geologist/Historian Frank Perry (College 8 ‘77) has studied the natural history of Santa Cruz, but also its history of Cowell family (lime kilns), including naturalists Laura Hecox and James Graham Cooper (for whom the hawk was named). He is Curator at the Capitola Historical Museum.
Drummond Pike founded Tides Foundation which has helped increase the capacity and effectiveness of thousands of social change organizations. He is currently Chairman of the board, Environmental Working Group, a really important and effective group.
Benjamin Oberhand is a Sustainability Analyst at EcoShift Consulting and Marketing Specialist at Ecology Action.
Hoyt Peckham studies endangered turtles. Peckham has been awarded a 2014 Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation to expand on his work with coastal communities in Mexico to support sustainable fishing practices link.
John Reid (Merrill '78, B.A. Economics)is the founder and former executive director of "A Grassroots Aspen Experience," a nonprofit organization in Aspen, Colorado. Reid helped inner-city youth experience an outdoor adventure far from their urban neighborhoods. The outdoor challenges are designed to teach kids how to overcome obstacles. video.
Edward Rico, (Biology and Community Studies 1990)did "environmental and animal rights work for international organization, then founded and directed a project doing educational work with children, focusing on issues of animals and the environment. I returned to school to pursue a law degree and during that time I worked doing enforcement work for the Environmental Protection Agency....hired on at Community Foundation for Monterey County (http://www.cfmco.org/), directing a project in the Salinas Valley, Poder Popular para la Salud del Pueblo (http://www.poderpopularca.org/index.html).
Matt Riese, philosophy alum made a hovercraft in the shape of a Delorean. He showed it at Maker Faire.
Gordon Ringold, head of Silicon Valley Initiatives, a set of educational and research activities that increase the presence of UC in Silicon Valley, earned his bachelor’s in biology from UCSC in 1972. He has started a handful of companies in genetics and biofuels, including Codexis, which manipulates enzymes to improve the conversion of sugar cane into fuel.
Dan Roam (fine art and biology) contends that these skills are needed more than ever in business and politics. Creativity under constraint, sound judgment in uncertain environments, rigorous thinking amid complex ideas -- these are the skills taught by the arts. Dan runs a management-consulting firm that uses visual thinking to solve complex problems. Saving the World with Art (video).
Susanne Rust (’03) Winner of several major awards for "Chemical Fallout," an investigative series on BPA: as well as 2008 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism from Columbia University.
The Nature Conservancy's Lead Scientist, Dr. M. Sanjayan.The Atlas of Global Conservation is being published by UC Press and The Nature Conservancy is resented here at Google. M. Sanjayan (biology Ph.D., '97), executive vice president and senior scientist for Conservation International and host of EARTH A New Wild, will give the Alumni Weekend keynote in April 2015, a talk entitled, "A New Wild: Saving Nature in a Human-Dominated World." Big Blue Live celebrates a wildlife success story and marine animal phenomenon: humpback whales, blue whales, sea lions, elephant seals, sea otters, great white sharks and more all convene in Monterey Bay once a year.PBS, hosted by Sanjayan, 8/15.
Alex Sassoon's goal is "to build a healthy, nature-integrated and environmentally sustainable community out of currently existing urban areas, and to make the towns I love the most economically and ecologically sustainable communities without compromising their unique character." (portfolio).
Chuck Savitt, Pres. and co-founder of Island Press in 1984, was able to unite his passion for the environment and the work of the nonprofit community with his business sense for publishing. With more than 800 books in print and publishing 40 new titles annually, Island Press (their blog) is the nation’s leading environmental publisher. Recently a book on forage fish led to new policy. He also works with CAKE, along with Slugs Lara Hansen (BA Biology 1991) and Eric Mielbrecht (BA Biology and MS Ocean Science) on adapting to climate change. (video discussions with authors).
Christian Schwarz ecology and evolution major now alum.Santa Cruz Mycoflora Project: you can do citizen science Christian Schwarz, co-author of the forthcoming book Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast 1/16. video talk 2013. see Mushrooms/bio-remediation.
Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear in 'Pandora's Promise', includes UCSC alum Michael Shellberger.
Matt Skenazy (Cowell '08, literature), assistant editor at Outside magazine, inspired by Conn Hallinan.
Stephen I. Schwartz, Cowell '87 Brookings Institute. Later publisher of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Schwartz says his interest in nuclear policy dates back to his days at UCSC. As a freshman, he planned to major in theater and film, but was hooked instead by the Adlai E. Stevenson Program on Nuclear Policy, since renamed the Stevenson Program on Global Security. bio.
Jason Scorse, international environmental policy program director at Monterey Institute of International Studies. [Blog.
Cheryl Scott runs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) office in East Africa.
Will Scott, 2002 "I've been teaching and mentoring individuals (in environmental studies, ecopsychology, wilderness and survival skills, and nature awareness). I've continued working in the wilderness (www.wildernesswithin.com), leading excursions and diving deeply into the work of facilitating rites of passage (www.schooloflostborders.org, www.wildernessreflections.com). My learning journey has gone on to include years of natural history and nature-based mentoring, as well as graduating form a permaculture and regenerative design program, which I continue ...I am currently pursuing a Masters in Adventure Education through Prescott College.
Nicole Silk is co-leader of The Nature Conservancy's Global Freshwater Team. B.A. in economics and ecology (1986).
Sarah Skenazy is Program Manager at The Buckminster Fuller see Eco-heroes Institute, including the awesome Challenge, see also Design Challenges.
Catherine Sneed worked with Allan Chadwick and (inspired by Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath) established a garden for prisoners in San Francisco, and then one in Hunter's Point.
Starry Sprenkle, tropical forest researcher, works in Haiti.
Bruce Stein maps biodiversity.
Paul Stith Electric Vehicles "EV" | Energy Storage | V2G | V2X | Smart Grid San Francisco Bay Area Renewables & Environment.
Evelyn Strauss (’98) executive director of Scientists Without Borders, a web-based collaborative community dedicated to generating, sharing, and advancing innovative science and technology-based solutions to the world's most pressing global development challenges.
Kathryn Sullivan--oceanographer, astronaut, educator wins Global Oceans Award, which recognizes Sullivan for her outstanding contributions to the understanding and conservation of the oceans. The primary goal of the first of her three shuttle missions was to survey the Earth, the atmosphere, and the oceans. She worked on the 2003 Pew report on the oceans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has appointed UCSC alumna Kathryn Sullivan to serve as administrator for NOAA. 3/14.
Geographic bio (11/19)
J. Scott Turner, College Eight '76. The Extended Organism: the Physiology of Animal-Built Structures, Harvard University Press, 2000.
Donald J. Usner, College Eight '81 The Natural History of Big Sur, U of California Press, 1993
Kennan Ward leading wildlife photographer.
Karen Washington, a 2008 graduate of the apprenticeship class at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems-+* at UC Santa Cruz was honored at the White House December 17 for her work with urban gardens in the Bronx.
Michael Wilson is a pioneer in the emerging field of sustainable or "green" chemistry. With 74 billion pounds of industrial chemicals produced and imported each day in the U.S. (much of it toxic or ecotoxic) Wilson's work focuses on transforming the nature of chemical design and production.
Gordon Wiltsie National Geographic photographer has worked everywhere from Peru to the North Pole.
Shaye Wolf, Staff Biologist, at the Center for Biological Diversity, works with the Center’s Climate Law Institute. She graduated with a bachelor’s in biology from Yale University and received a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology and a master’s in ocean sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she examined the effects of ocean climate change on seabird populations. During her graduate studies, Shaye worked with the biodiversity protection groups in México and California; before that she was a wildlife biologist on projects with seabirds, songbirds, raptors, and spiders.
Alec Webster (College Eight, 2002, Environmental Studies), is funding converting the hay barn to an environmental center.
Michael Woo (College 8, Politics and Urban Studies) is Dean for the College of Environmental Design at CalPoly in Pomona. He served as the first Asian American on the Los Angeles City Council from 1985 to 1993, ran for mayor, and was GM for Flexcar (which merged with Zipcar).
Kiea Spake Wright, 2001 is finishing a Masters in Education program, focusing on Environmental Education. Kiea manages an environmental education program at a local elementary school and has started a nature awareness program for homeschool students. After UCSC, she spent many years working in the Mojave Desert on conservation biology projects.
George Kenneth Wuerthner, Grad. Div. '85. Yosemite: the Grace & Granduer, Voyageur Press, 2002
Students
Fossil Free UC UCSC organizers include Alden Phinney, Claire Watts and Cormac Martinez del Rio. The University of California Is Dumping Fossil Fuel Investments Whoohoo, huge win! (City on a Hill story), (2016 video of Carson College talk). To see why see Bill McKibben, who pioneered divestment with 7 of his college students who created 350.org.
A beautiful, full-color Field Guide to Plants of UC Santa Cruz makes exploring the landscapes of the campus—and the county—fun and rewarding, a labor of love for author Nathalie Martin (College Nine '17, environmental studies), who hopes the 173-page volume filled with photographs, maps, and tips will inspire others to build their knowledge of local plants "and all the curiosities and wonders that accompany them." 5/19.
Due to Colony Collapse Disorder, Environmental Studies senior Forest Peri wanted to make a welcoming home for native bees.4/18.
Central California's stream restoration projects unevenly distributed, study finds, video full article, Bronwen Stanford, Erika Zavaleta, Adam Millard-Ball 7/18.
Peter Heintzman's analysis of ancient DNA reveals a previously unrecognized genus of extinct horses that once roamed North America: "The horse family, thanks to its rich and deep fossil record, has been a model system for understanding and teaching evolution. Now ancient DNA has rewritten the evolutionary history of this iconic group," 2/18.
Polar bears finding it harder to catch enough seals to meet energy demands: Anthony Pagano's study reveals high metabolic rates, meaning polar bears need a lot of fat-rich prey, but more than half of those studied were running an energy deficit 2/18. see Wildlife and Category:Global_Warming.
Inaugural Fred Keeley Coastal Scholars learn by doing: Linda Pineda (College Eight, ’16, Earth sciences) and Erica Ferrer are the inaugural recipients of the Fred Keeley Coastal Scholarship–a new program that supports hands-on summer research for UC Santa Cruz students interested in coastal sustainability. 1/16
Andres Arias (Oakes, 2016), a double major in Latin American and Latino studies and sociology, has immersed himself in California migrant communities to conduct original research about this vulnerable and often voiceless population. 9/16
Global Food Initiative fellowships to advance sustainable food systems. 10/15.
Fulbright scholarships Five UCSC students are winners of Fulbright scholarships for a year of research and study abroad. Three are doing environmental studies. Joanna Ory will travel to Italy to research the effects of policies that limit herbicide use and promote sustainable pest management on corn farms. Carolina Reyes will study the genes and microorganisms involved in iron reduction in natural sediments may lead to the discovery of novel organisms and gene products with potential applications in biotechnology. Devon Sampson has been working in Mexico since January, researching the agro-biodiversity methods of Mayan farmers. Sampson, a life-long gardener, said he enrolled in UC Santa Cruz because of its agroecology program and professor Steve Gliessman. link 10/11.
Bacteria inhibit bat-killing fungus, could combat white-nose syndrome. Bacteria found naturally on some bats may prove useful in controlling the deadly fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome, which has devastated bat populations throughout eastern North America and continues to spread across the continent. Joseph Hoyt (he's batman!), a UC Santa Cruz graduate student who leads the study. 4/15
Percolating ideas: Grad student Sarah Beganskas is studying what could become part of the solution to California’s water crisis: collecting storm runoff so it can seep into the ground instead of being diverted to rivers and seas. 4/16
Mollie King (College 8) Small Mammal Undergraduate Research in the Forest, Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group at UCSC, NOAA: Gaia UCSC eco-magazine. Currwent research entails analyzing how individuals from Indigenous Amazonian communities view oil extraction.
Sarah Angulo, coordinator for the Student Environmental Center’s Drop Your Own Drip campaign, a project that focuses its efforts towards the production of simulated monthly water statements for on-campus apartment residents at UCSC. Included in the project is a competition among students with incentives to reduce water use, as well as a celebration event upon completion.
Tamara Ball, Post-Doctoral Researcher & IDEASS instructor.
Adelia Barber (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) hiked the Continental Divide, worked on a conservation project in Tanzania, and studied environmental science as an undergraduate at Brown University in Rhode Island. Because she's also a self-described math geek, Barber decided to explore a relatively new area of plant ecology that uses computer models to understand plant populations. At UCSC, she found a terrific advisor: Daniel Doak, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. And she found the perfect species to study: bristlecone pines, the oldest living things on the planet. Ultimately, the research could lead to predictions about how global warming might affect the trees in the future. She was an early and featured partner with Google Earth.
Heather M. Briggs, Bee research 7/13.
Calil, a Ph.D. candidate in the Ocean Sciences, and the Nature Conservancy have published a study that provides a method for the state to reduce the risk of flooding, save coastal buildings and structures, and preserve habitat in the face of extreme weather. 7/15.
Gabriella Estevam interned at The Story of Stuff Project.
Graduate student Honghan Fei and Prof Scott Oliver have now developed a new type of material that can soak up negatively-charged pollutants from water. The new material, which they call SLUG-26, could be used to treat polluted water through an ion exchange process similar to water softening. 9/11
Gabi Kirk and Cameron Fields, and UCSC sustainability director Aurora Winslade, traveled 6,449 miles to Taiwan, where they led a two-day workshop on June 29 and 30 for the Taiwan Green University Program. More.
Chaos Cabal was pioneers of chaos theory. It included Robert Stetson Shaw, a physicist who was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work in Chaos theory, also in a group of maverick physicists who were attempting to create a computer capable of predicting the outcome of a game of roulette.Chaos book chapter.
College Eight students roll up their sleeves for the planet. Delia Bense-Kang works for Powersave.
Evelyn Castle, a junior health sciences major at UC Santa Cruz, has received a $10,000 public Strauss service scholarship to support her efforts to improve health care in Nigeria. Castle spent three months at a health clinic in Nigeria through the UCSC Global Information Internship Program.
Molly Church (Environmental Toxicology) In 1982, the total population of California condors was just 22 birds. Four years later, as the wild population continued to plummet, biologists decided to capture the remaining wild condors and breed them in captivity. Now, 140 captive-bred California condors are flying free in California, Arizona, and Baja California. But life in the wild is still full of hazards for this critically endangered species. Lead poisoning is one of the most serious and persistent threats to wild condors. Church was able to match the lead in blood samples from condors to the lead in ammunition obtained from a variety of sources throughout central California. She used a proven “fingerprinting” technique based on the unique isotope ratios found in different sources of lead. Donald Smith, professor and chair of environmental toxicology, testified at several hearings in Sacramento: “Had it not been for the outstanding science in Molly’s paper, the professional lobbyists for hunter-advocacy groups testifying in opposition to the bill would have gone unchallenged,” Smith says.
Graduate student Peter Cook trained Ronan, a California sea lion, to bob her head in time with a rhythm. Scientists once thought that the underpinnings of musical ability were unique to humans. 4/13.
Tela Favalor, Electrical Engineering NANOSTRUCTURING THERMOELECTRIC MATERIALS FOR WASTE ENERGY RECOVERY AND POWER GENERATION.
Rick Flores is a graduate student in the Environmental Studies Department focusing on the efforts of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band to relearn traditional ecological knowledge and become active stewards in their traditional territory once again after colonization (the Steward of the Amah Mutsunat the Arboretum, which is a collaborative effort between the Arboretum).More at Ctr for Creative Ecologies.
Elaine Gan, Digital Arts & New Media CONSIDERING RICE: VISUAL EXPERIMENTS IN MAPPING WORLDS OTHERWISE (2011 award winner).
Artist Diana Gilon recently led a crowdsourced project to paint an Oxfam-inspired mural on a California college campus College 9 mural leads Oxfam to ask, Can Art change the world? see Art page.
Global Brigades wins Chancellor Award. They do medical, dental, economic and water development in Third World countries, often during summer.
Brian M. Dowd-Uribe is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Studies at UCSC. His primary expertise is in agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa, and he has been a lecturer in environmental science at Santa Clara University and in sustainable development and environmental interpretation at UCSC, as well as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo. His research explores both the agro-ecological and social impacts of alternative agrifood movements, including organic and fair trade cotton production, and the social impacts of the introduction of genetically engineered crops.
Samantha House, a student in the division's Legal Studies department, received the Gabriel Zimmerman Memorial Scholarship for her engagement with a wide range of social justice issues and problems.
Physics grad student Katie Hellier—who also has a degree in fashion—is doing research into new solar cell materials 10/17. Works with Carter, see below.
Undergraduates Laurel Hunt and Galen Licht saw the effects of climate change during a research expedition to the Peruvian Andes.
College 8 student Catalina Sanint is completing an internship in DC with Rep. Jerry McNerney, a wind energy entrepreneur who defeated a powerful incumbent Pombo, intent on essentially eliminating the Endangered Species Act, one of the most important green laws ever created. Pombo is currently trying to make a [1]
Chris Darimont, a postdoctoral researcher in environmental studies, and his co-authors found a dramatic acceleration in trait changes among species heavily hunted or fished by humans, which could inform hunting policy.
UCSC Fullbright scholars study global warming, agroecology, and biodiversity.
Adelia Barber is using Google Earth to map research on Bristlecone Pines.
Sean Dugan is garden coordinator for the Program in Community and Agroecology (PICA).
Gemma Givens will attend the United Nations international conference on climate change as a "backpack journalist, will also represent the Indigenous Environmental Network as part of their Native Youth Delegation. Youth Grabbing the Wheel: Young Leaders Speak Up on Driving Down Carbon Commonwealth Club talk 5/4/10
Chris Darimont does research on human super-predatory activities on fisheries.
Katie Roper has done internships in Kenya, and spent a year living in a "sustainable community" on campus. She she single-handedly produced a six-minute video documentary called Thirsty Trees: And the Search for Better Alternatives.
Adelia Barber helps fight local battle against logging.
Camila Cribb Fabersunne had the enviable dilemma of deciding among medical school offers from Stanford, UC San Francisco, and Harvard. She chose Harvard, where she also plans to pursue a master's in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Fabersunne spent summer 2009 in Uganda as an intern with the Uganda Village Project, working to improve women's health.
Myra Finkelstein studies marine bycatch and how lead affects raptors like condors.
Melinda Fowler tags very large elephant seals
Lara Hale works on energy issues.
Robert Dewey Helvestine meshed his fascination with engineering and his love of the natural world. His senior project was a system to remotely monitor endangered seabird populations at Año Nuevo Island.
Hopkins research finds Yosemite bears and human food shifts 3/14. Also research in China.
Gabi Kirk (Kresge ‘12, environmental studies and history), Office of Sustainability events coordinator, helped start a campaign to end the sales of single-use plastic water bottles on campus. The campaign, “Take Back the Tap,” is now the subject of her senior thesis. See Plastic. “It’s been a great experience for me to meld together social movement theory, facts about water privatization and plastic, and community organizing skills into one project,” Kirk says.
Brent Hughes, now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, began studying water quality in Elkhorn Slough as a UCSC graduate student. His earlier research showed that virtually every portion of the estuary is adversely affected by high nutrient levels, which stimulate the growth of algae, leading to low oxygen levels when the algae die and decompose, aka Dead Zones. 6/15. see Ocean.
Carolyn Kurle (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) found that colonies on islands are highly vulnerable to introduced rats, which find the ground-nesting birds to be easy prey. But the ecological impacts of rats on islands extend far beyond seabird nesting colonies.
Christopher Lam was part of a student team that designed and built a robotic device to filter plastic debris out of the ocean.
Fulbright Awards: Timothy Krupnik, Michelle Olsgard, and Anna Zivian have received 2008-2009
Allison Luengenstudies toxins in the ocean
Chris Bacon studies sustainable coffee, and co-edited Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Fair Trade, Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystems in Mexico and Central America.
Anna Gonzales studies hexa-valent Chromium-6. 2006 with Flegal.
Rehan Iftikhar, of GIIP worked at a number of NGOs in Africa, Latin America and the U.S., including the National Development Project and the Center for Democracy and Development. He now works as a WiserEarth programmer.
Intrepid Kate Langwig doesBat disease research 12/14.
Jennifer Maresh Ecology & Evolutionary Biology: THE ECONOMICS OF MOVEMENT IN 3 DIMENSIONS: THE AT-SEA BIOMECHANICS AND ENERGETIC COSTS OF SWIMMING IN A MARINE TOP PREDATOR.
Marine Biology students get grant to study seagrass with European collaborators. 3/13.
Queralt Vallmajo Martin, an exchange student from Spain,created a calcium detector, importsnt in many bodily functions including pregnancy and diseases such as osteoporosis.
Emily Martinez, Digital Arts & New Media: MAPPING ASTHMA RESEARCH FOR SOCIAL CHANGE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING AIR QUALITY
Sara Maxwell studies the relationship between seamounts and other large bathymetric features and the migratory and foraging patterns of large pelagic animals, such as seals, seabirds and whales. She am working with the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (www.toppcensus.org) program, and won the 2010 Graduate Research Prize as did Valerie Brown for statistical study of fish populations.
Amy Morris looks at the governance of conservation easements, which which has environmental justice aspects.
Engineering students develop a coral reef monitoring system
Esther Rojas-Garcia’s first GIIP internship was with United Farm Workers in Watsonville. After facilitating a technology training workshop for International Health Programs Latin America, she interned with the World Bank on a micro-credit project and is now working in the Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction Unit.
Dee Rossiter studies clouds.
Gabriel Sady wins UCSC enviro scholarship to study forests in Costa Rica.
Joe Sapp's research is on the socially parasitic "slave-making" or "amazon" ant's fascinating and bizarre system: workers conduct raids on nearby Formica nests. Because of chemical signals, stolen brood work in the parasitic slave-maker nest as if it was their own.
Christian Schwarz--a fun guy, leader of mushroom enthusiasts club.
Sajin Sison-Mangus got a grant from the Dean's Fund for Undergraduate Research, to study to determine whether certain bacteria influence production of domoic acid during algal blooms, which affects sea otters. 6/15.
Caffeine culture: Anthropology student traces coffee’s route from farm to cup When Katie Slocum, an anthropology major at UC Santa Cruz, got her first espresso fix at Verve, she had no idea that a year later she would be following the company to a Honduran mountaintop on a journey through the coffee supply chain. 6/15
Rosie Spinks, ENVS, College 8, UCSC's City on a Hill Press and co-founder of UCSC's first environmental magazine, Gaia. This work helped win her a coveted editorial internship at Sierra magazine, the national publication of the Sierra Club. A story she wrote for Sierra (about the teenage daughter of a Watsonville farm worker family fighting the use of the pesticide methyl iodide) was published on the magazine's website.
GIIP student Roslyn Wang served an internship with Kiva. Kiva was the world’s first micro-lending site, giving individuals the opportunity to make small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.
Rhys Thom, also GIIP, served as the project director for Delta Info Initiative, a rural information technology project in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. He earlier interned at the Office of the Ombudsman of Namibia working on human rights and environmental projects. He is currently employed at the World Resources Institute (WRI). As the Program and Communications Coordinator for EMBARQ, he researches and implements environmentally and financially sustainable urban transport solutions.
Paul Viotti, contrary to the stereotype of Americans as self-interested individualists, has found that the majority care more about growing economic inequality than we've been led to expect, and many would sacrifice personal gain for the well-being of others, according to research by politics doctoral candidate.5/13.
[http://news.ucsc.edu/2013/10/rev-fall-13-great-responsibility.html Carson Watts (Oakes '13, sociology)who studied the slums of Old Fadama in the capital city of Ghana, not only wrote his senior thesis from research gathered during the five-month trip with EAP but he is also writing a position paper to send to Ghanaian officials outlining what he discovered.
Amy E. West "left a landlocked state to study the ocean, joined Peace Corps to live among cannibals, moved to New Zealand for graduate school without first being accepted, and racked up research experience worldwide in subjects ranging from sifters (phytoplankton) to drifters (whales) without climbing any career ladder...channeling Sylvia Earle, Jacques Cousteau, and Rachel Carson collectively to publicly demonstrate the relevance of marine science." She interned at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and recently published an article on recycling plastic in the Pacific Gyre.
Mele Wheaton just received a Switzer Fellowship for improving teaching about the environment. She has worked on conservation, including sea otters.
Lillian Wilson won a Strauss Award for Creating a Sustainable Future: Greening America's Jobs for At-Risk Youth.
Tiffany Wise-West Environmental Studies. Greenwharf MOBILIZATION OF THE SANTA CRUZ WHARF COASTAL ENERGY RESEARCH FACILITY. (UCSC Carbon Fund).
Shaye Wolfe (Marine Sciences, , Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) The Coronado Islands are located off the coast of Baja California, just south of the Mexican border. As part of her research for a master’s degree in ocean sciences, graduate student Shaye Wolf documented the large and diverse populations of seabirds that nest on the Coronado Islands. These include the largest known colony of the rare Xantus’s murrelet, a small seabird listed as endangered under Mexican law and threatened in California. While she was doing her research, Wolf learned that Chevron was planning to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal less than 700 yards from the south island, which hosts the Xantus’s murrelet colony. The murrelets and four other species that nest on the island are nocturnal, and Wolf was especially concerned about the effects of the terminal’s lights.
Alan York, a Chadwick apprentice, pioneers organic/bio-dynamic wine growing.
Faculty
Sustainability list (pdf).
Materials Science and Engineering Initiative focuses on sustainability 6/17
River blindness breahthrough River blindness and elephantiasis, debilitating diseases infect as many as 150 million people worldwide. They are among the "neglected tropical diseases"; cell biologist William Sullivan a professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology, developed a drug. He teaches at course on neglected diseases.7/18.
New research calculates capacity of North American forests to sequester carbon: The result is a compelling picture that's of great value, because forests play a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change. "There's a lot of hope that our forests will soak up the carbon dioxide we're producing, but the capacity of our forests is limited," said lead researcher Kai Zhu, an assistant professor of environmental studies 7/18.
Adina Paytan, a research scientist in the Institute of Marine Sciences studies paleoceanography and paleoclimatology, which includes studies of groundwater discharge into coastal systems, nutrient cycling, ocean acidification.
Elliot Anderson and Jennifer Parker (OpenLab bio) are featured artists in Groundswell. Parker and Barney Haynes present a new media installation that interactively engages gallery viewers with solar wind data. Anderson examines the technological landscape with a hydroponic garden that phytoremediates water polluted with mercury and other heavy metals left from 19th century mining operations. Wastewater event. Elliot Anderson, an Associate Prof. of Art & Electronic Media in the Art Department and Digital Arts and the New Media (http://eanderson.ucsc.edu/), is seeking student researchers to work with him on his "Silicon Monuments: An Augmented Reality Tour of Silicon Valley Superfund Sites" (http://www.siliconmonuments.org/). Openlabs combines art and science.
Hillary Angelo, UC Santa Cruz assistant professor of sociology, argues in the journal Nature that while big cities appear to be islands of sustainable living, issues of social equity and global impacts are missing from measures of cities' environmental friendliness. See Stewart Brand in Eco-heroes. See Land Use.
Rachel Barnett-Johnson, a fisheries biologist, investigates salmon population.
James Barsimantov is an expert in corporate sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions. He received his doctorate in Environmental Studies from the UCSC with a focus on environmental economics, policy, and natural resource management. Dr. Barsimantov’s work focuses on developing sustainability reporting and certification frameworks, including defining appropriate protocols, metrics, and tools. He currently sits on the energy advisory committee for the Santa Cruz desalination plant, and leads the Monterey Bay Regional Climate Action Compact. Dr. Barsimantov also teaches environmental policy and economics, and sustainability project design in the Environmental Studies and Electrical Engineering departments, including IDEASS.
Mangroves reduce flood damages during hurricanes, saving billions of dollars in property losses “This work helps to identify where to invest cost effectively in habitat restoration and conservation, which is critical for building coastal resilience,” said project team leader Michael Beck, research professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz. 11/19.
Giacomo Bernardi is in Evolutionary Biology. His Post Doc was at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station at Pacific Grove. His research focus is on the molecular ecology and evolution of coral reef fishes. He does his research in California, the Sea of Cortez, French Polynesia, the Caribbean, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa and the Mozambique Channel. His research areas include speciation, population genetics, and ecology of coral reef fishes. (video of fish tool use). (10/19 update).
Barbara Benish, Open Lab SS Palo Alto ocean art project.
Chris Benner, a professor of environmental studies and sociology, co-wrote the book with Manuel Pastor, a UCSC alumnus and former UCSC professor now with the University of Southern California. Equity, Growth, and Community looks at almost 200 U.S. metropolitan regions to better understand what makes a city economically sustainable.
Braslau Lab are trying to eliminate hormone-disrupting chemicals. ( Green Chemistry ) supports STEM 4/18, see Plastic. 12/18 Update, success.
Emily Brodsky is a geophysicist whose research focuses on rapid phenomena like earth-quakes and volcanic eruptions. She is best-known for her work on earthquake triggering, including geo-thermal power plants.
Edmund Burke co-edited The Environment and World History with Kenneth Pomeranz.
Linda Burman-Hall, Professor of Music, did sound collage composition and videography for "Mentawai: Listening to the Rainforest".
Jeffrey Bury studies privatized conservation efforts, ecotourism, and livelihood transformations in the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru. personal webpage.Undergraduate ENVS students Laurel Hunt and Galen Licht saw the effects of climate change during a research expedition to the Peruvian Andes.
Elliott Campbell's (ENVS) research focuses on climate change; he uses global models to develop sustainable solutions for food, energy, and water management.
Melissa Caldwell, food policy expert, will be discussing the global food crisis at international conference sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Mark Carr and Peter Raimondi, professors of ecology and evolutionary biology, lead ocean monitoring effort. PBS NewsHour video segment on new marine reserves 3/11. starfish disease 11/13.[5/15 update/ background]. Wild, Wild West Coast study of warm water effects. 1/16.
Sue Carter, a professor of physics, is developing cheaper and more efficient solar cells. She was awarded five new grants this year totaling more than $1 million to fund her research. As the first recipient of the Faculty Climate Action Champion Award, physics professor Sue Carter will establish a campus sustainability lab to support student-led research and training. 10/15.Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development (CIED) 4/16.more.
Patrick Chaung studies pollution in the atmosphere, which may help refine global warming models.
Nancy Chen breaks down divisions between food and medicine, and she underscores that medicinal foods are the "front line of healing." Working to improve food security at UCSC: A professor of anthropology, Chen and Galarneau help lead a working group of faculty, staff, and student to improve food access. 1/16
Marc Cioc has researched environmental history, and wrote The Game of Conservation: International Treaties to Protect the World’s Migratory Animals 2009.
Dan Costa and his students are tagging marine life to send back realtime information never before available. You can follow activities at TOPP and see Video from KQED's Quest as well as PBS's Ocean Animal Emergency. video from Antarctica. See An-Arctic page. 3/18 Update
Don Croll Marine Ecology, Marine Conservation Biology Coastal Science Campus 2016
Ben Crow studies inequality around water and land issues.
Sharon Daniel, James Davis and their students at Digital Arts and New Media are creating Social Cost Tracker, an open-source mobile technology designed to promote just labor and ecological practices by informing consumer choices at the point of purchase. The phrase "social cost" refers to both the human capital exploited and the natural resources expended in the production of consumer goods. They are in the early stages of development and conceptualization and are looking for organizations and companies interested in collaboration.
David Deamer, research professor of biomolecular engineering; his work led to the first time ever that DNA was successfully sequenced in microgravity as part of an experiment performed by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins aboard the International Space Station. 9/16. Nanotechnology.
History of art and visual culture professor T.J. Demos, who is also director of the Center for Creative Ecologies will present Climate Justice Now!--Art Activism, Environment Today is the title of the 2016 Arts Dean’s Lecture Series--an array of free public talks running March 30 to May 25 at UC Santa Cruz.
Nathaniel Dominy helped document that he legendary "man-eating lions of Tsavo" that terrorized a railroad camp in Kenya more than a century ago likely consumed about 35 people--far fewer than popular estimates of 135 victims.
Robin Dunkin, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, LML Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Latex balloons are a major cause of death in marine turtles, birds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions as well as other wildlife. Despite claims to the contrary, there has been very little work to quantify the degradation time of latex in the environment. Open Lab.
Melanie DuPuis is the author of the book Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink (McHenry GT2920.M55 D86 2002) and numerous scholarly articles on food and food-related topics. She is currently co-editor of an issue of the current special "politics of food" issue of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture
James Estes and John Terborgh in a new book explore the importance of predators in Trophic Cascades: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature. They explain how top predators play an essential role in maintaining ecosystem well-being, and how this natural regulatory system is often drastically disrupted by human interventions-when wolves and cougars are removed, for example, populations of deer and beaver become destructive. classic but accessible essay on trophic cascades with Soule et al (see below). Important work on sea otters and climate change (see Wilmers). Sustainability Now! Sunday, March 7th, 2021, from 5-6 PM, on KSQD, 90.7 FM and KSQD.org. The southern sea otter is a keystone species in kelp forest communities, acting to increase the species diversity and providing ecosystem services. Despite federal protection since 1977, the southern sea otter population has struggled to recover and there are only an estimated 2,800 sea otters in California. Listen to a conversation with Dr. James Estes, Emeritus Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. Estes is author of Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand Nature and appears in “The Serengeti Rules,” a 2019 film about “five unsung heroes of modern ecology,” of which he is one. Of course, Jim is best known for his research on California sea otters, once almost wiped out, then recovered and now again threatened by marine toxins, diseases, orcas and agricultural chemical runoff. The broadcasts of Sustainability Now! are archived at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.
Sylvanna Falcón, a professor of Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) and a human rights researcher: New Human Rights Lab trains students to investigate wrongdoing. Students use high-tech sleuthing tools to help hold perpetrators accountable. Indigenous environmental activists such a [https://rachelcarson-wiki.lt.ucsc.edu/mediawiki/index.php?title=Eco-heroes&action=edit§ion=4 Berta Caseres are frequent targets. 10/19
Climate scientist Nicole Feldl wins NSF Award: Grant includes funding for climate research and for a cross-disciplinary environmental game project for students to develop a learning game about climate science 6/18.
Myra Finkelstein, an environmental toxicologist says she hopes that her recent findings will help spur cleanup efforts on Midway Atoll, where lead-based paint from abandoned military buildings contaminates nearby albatross nests. On Condors and lead. [Eagles and lead.
Andrew Fisher, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, leads UCSC's participation in the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI). He will be a co-chief scientist (with Takeshi Tsuji of Kyoto University) on an expedition this summer to the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of British Columbia, where he has been studying the flow of water beneath the seafloor since the mid-1990s. Also he is working at an infiltration pond in California's Pajaro Valley that has become a laboratory where scientists are working to improve techniques for recharging the region's depleted aquifer More. Here's video from expedition. 7/16 award update. One reason why UC Santa Cruz among greenest universities in Sierra Club ranking 8/16.
Russ Flegal does research on mercury e-tox case study on malformed amphibians. Congressional testimony 10/13. Anna Gonzales studies hexa-valent Chromium-6. 2006 with Flegal. also methyl mercury.
Dana Frank one of top academic experts on Honduras, and has written on women in banana labor unions(includes pesticides). audio interview on wave of child immigrants from Latin America 6/25/14.
Winifred F. Frick (B.A. ENVS Porter '98), in a study published in the August 6 issue of Science, writes that a disease is spreading quickly across the northeastern U.S. and Canada and now affects seven bat species. NPR.org interview Update: NSF grant 12/14 update with A.M. Kilpatrick who has tracked effect of global warming on West Nile virus. Update 5/12 effects of wildfires 3/13. Bat White nose disease 2/20.
Environmental Studies professor Greg Gilbert established a research and teaching site in 2007 in the mixed-evergreen coastal forest on the north campus. The nearly 15-acre Forest Ecology Research Plot (FERP) has been accepted into the global network of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) / Global Earth Observatory (SIGEO).More.
Steve Gliessman works to improve organic agriculture and Fair Trade. City on a Hill article on his work with coffee. Also excerpts from his book Agroecology : The Ecology Of Sustainable Food Systems / Steven R. Gliessman 2007 S&E Stacks S589.7 .G58 2007. Agro-ecology (video overview); He co-edited Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Fair Trade, Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystems in Mexico and Central America. McH Stacks HD9199.M62 C66 2008
Global Warming research is being done by Christina Ravelo, a professor of ocean sciences and James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences. Ravelo is part of an international team that is using ocean floor sediment samples to compile data on past periods of global warming in order to understand today's climate changes. 4/13.
Gary Griggs has a new book that offers a fascinating guide to the beaches and coast of California, published by UC Press, Introduction to California's Beaches and Coast. He helped create a guidebook for local government agencies to help them make the difficult the decisions ahead regarding sea level rise. More Congressional testimony 10/13. Griggs and coauthor explore California’s captivating coastal edge from past to present and look ahead to how climate change, fisheries, petroleum industries, and coastal development intertwine to transform coastal communities in two new books 10/17.
R. Edward Grumbine is the author of Ghost Bears (Island Press, 1992). He teaches environmental studies at Prescott College and directed the Sierra Institute, University of California Extension, Santa Cruz, for more than a decade. He has written a new book on China, Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River
Julie Guthman (Kresge, '79, sociology), researches organic agriculture. audio interview on her new book Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism UC Press, 2011. Overview. Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California, the first social science study of organic foods in the United States, has been updated. 2015 (award). The powerful fumigant methyl bromide will be retired from California’s strawberry fields at the end of this year after more than 20 years of fierce debate over its effects and alternatives. According to new research published by UC Santa Cruz professor and food studies expert Julie Guthman, these debates often pit the health and well-being of farm workers against the economic viability of growers while overlooking the constraints and availability of farm land. Julie Guthman on history of strawberry farms (audio interview), new book is Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry UC Press, 2019.
Roberto Gwiazda and Don Smith, environmental toxicologists at UCSC, track uranium exposure.
Brent Haddad is an authority on water issues, and in 1999 published the book Rivers of Gold: Designing Markets to Allocate Water in California (HD1694.C2 H23 1999). He is currently working on a new book in which he will discuss the issue of worldwide potable water.
David Haussler, professor of biomolecular engineering, said development of the Genome browser was driven by the needs of cancer researchers, who are now using powerful technologies for genome analysis and DNA sequencing in their efforts to understand cancer at the molecular level.
Brent Haddad establishes water study program at UCSC.
Bill Henry and Myra Finkelstein are researching plastic in the oceans.
Daniel Hirsch heads the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a non-profit nuclear policy organization focusing on issues of nuclear safety, waste disposal, smart meters. Daniel Hirsch is a lecturer in Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the former Director of the Stevenson Program on Nuclear Policy at UCSC. Hirsch is also President of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a forty-year-old nonprofit organization working to reduce risks of nuclear accident, nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and problems of radioactive waste disposal. see Nuclear Power.
Kathleen Kay, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, has found California's status as a plant biodiversity hotspot to low rates of extinction, rather than high rates of speciation.
Marm Kilpatrick (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) researches climate change impact on West Nile Virus. 7/10 update. Bat disease research
A Fierce Green Fire by Slug filmmaker Mark Kitchell is in production. It is a history of US environmentalism.
Nobuhiko Kobayashi, associate professor of electrical engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering is principal investigator on a project based on a unique thin-film waveguide that collects sunlight and transforms it to match an optical fiber with minimum losses compared to traditional light-concentrating optics.A $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) will support research at UC Santa Cruz on the development of an innovative optical device for harvesting concentrated sunlight into an optical fiber for applications such as thermal storage, photovoltaic conversion, or solar lighting.
Paul Koch has done some great research on pre-history which may have implications for our time, such as helping condors survive in the wild.
Kristy Kroeker, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology with $875K Packard funding, plans to conduct large-scale studies of marine ecosystems to understand how these global changes will affect not only individual species but complex assemblages of multiple species (kelp and acidification) 10/15. As Faculty Climate Action Champion for 2016-17 Kroeker plans to use research on how environmental changes in the ocean could affect human health10/16 update. One reason why UC Santa Cruz among greenest universities in Sierra Club ranking 8/16.
Joel Kubby, associate professor of electrical engineering, works on Quantum Dots to increase the efficiency of Silicon solar cells, as well as development of a renewable-energy microgrid at NASA Ames.
Raphael Kudela, professor of ocean sciences, participated in a study that links seabird deaths to soap-like foam produced by red-tide algae. His team is trying to predict when toxin-producing algae will strike again with computer models. 9/10 update. 11/11: UCSC leads $4 million NOAA project to monitor harmful algal blooms. NASA award 7.12. Congressional testimony 10/13. UCSC ocean scientist Raphael Kudela is a lead author of the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, which provides new evidence for the benefits of limiting global warming 10/19. Kudela algae update 12/19.
Ken Laws does HF radar sensing of ocean surface phenomena, autonomous ocean surface vehicles and passive microwave measurements of ocean surface vehicles.
Genome Browser Project researchers have developed an Ebola genome browser to speed global efforts to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus after working around the clock for a week. Director Jim Kent fourteen years ago developed the first working draft of the human genomesome assembly required (icing his hands to continue a coding marathon) and helped create a genome browser 11 years ago for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, during an outbreak.
Ruth Langridge, Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, is to review the history, development, overall condition and current management practices for all of California’s court-adjudicated groundwater basins. 1/16. See Water.
Yat Li, associate professor of chemistry, and team developed the solar-microbial device which harnesses sun and sewage to produce hydrogen fuel, using only sunlight and wastewater to produce hydrogen gas could provide a sustainable energy source while improving the efficiency of wastewater treatment. The hybrid device combines a microbial fuel cell (MFC) and a type of solar cell called a photoelectrochemical cell (PEC). In the MFC component, bacteria degrade organic matter in the wastewater, generating electricity in the process. The biologically generated electricity is delivered to the PEC component to assist the solar-powered splitting of water (electrolysis) that generates hydrogen and oxygen.
Roger Linington is an associate professor of biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz. His research centers on marine natural products used in biomedical science. Linington’s research has two major focuses: drug discovery for neglected infectious diseases, including malaria, TB and dengue fever, and the use of natural products as probes for biological systems.
Ronnie Lipschutz, College 8 Provost, teaches courses on international politics, foreign policy, politics and popular culture, global environmental politics, green philosophy and ethics, capitalism, empire, sustainability engineering and other topics. He has been Director and Co-Director of the UCSC Center for Global, International and Regional Studies (CGIRS), and is a co-founder of the faculty group in Sustainability Engineering and Ecological Design (SEED). He has published widely; his most recent book is Political Economy, Capitalism and Popular Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).
Wentai Liu, professor of electrical engineering has won Popular Mechanics Magazine's 2010 Breakthroughs Award. For more than two decades, Liu has been working with a team of doctors and engineers to develop a retinal implant that can restore vision to people who have gone blind from degenerative retinal diseases, which is now being tested in clinical trials.More
Deborah Letourneau has done research into GMO's along with Joy Hagen and Ingrid Parker. She also studies plant-insect interactions, biodiversity, and environmental risk in the context of decision-making in managed systems (example, forests and agriculture). Letourneau's datasets propel research that shows biodiversity improves crop production. When Environmental Studies Professor Deborah Letourneau was getting ready to retire, she gave several of her datasets to younger researchers so they could make use of them. And did they ever. 11/19
Suresh K Lodha, Computer Science, has contributed to the Atlas of Global Inequality with Ben Crow, and The Atlas of California: Mapping the challenge of a new era (2013).
Michael E. Loik, (environmental studies )investigates how changing precipitation patterns will affect the ecosystems that help to feed, fuel, and house us.
Scott Lokey of the Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry works with the Chemical Screening Center which does houses high-throughput screening(HTS) robotics that are used to search for biologically active compounds (up to 30,000 chemical compounds per day for biological function and/or usefulness in fighting diseases).
Chip Lord was founding member of the Ant Farm, a collective that did art and architecture, including ferro cement and inflatable structures, as well as a Dolpin Embassy. Influenced by Buckminster Fuller.
Marc Los Huertos investigates nitrogen in river and ocean systems including the Pajaro River.
Flora Lu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Since 1992, Flora has been conducting research with the Huaorani Indians of the Ecuadorian Amazon, a predominantly subsistence-based population of hunter-gatherer-horticulturalists, especially effects of extraction (oil , logging).ENVS faculty Flora Lu, accompanied by her former UCSC advisees Néstor Silva, Leah Henderson, and Yukari Shichishima, traveled to Yasuní National Park as part of Lu's National Science Foundation funded research project investigating the daily, lived experiences of local families living in zones of oil extraction. ENVS faculty Flora Lu, accompanied by her former UCSC advisees Néstor Silva, Leah Henderson, and Yukari Shichishima, traveled to Yasuní National Park as part of Lu's National Science Foundation funded research project investigating the daily, lived experiences of local families living in zones of oil extraction. See also Environmental Justice.
Paul Lubeck leads the Everette program (formerly GIIP), whose goal is create a new generation of “info-savvy” advocates using information technology to overcome informational exclusion. examples of projects.
Robert Ludwig works on Renewable bioenergy: hydrogen production by direct photoconversion.
Marc Mangel, distinguished professor in applied mathematics and statistics discovered a continued increase of Lyme disease in the United States, once linked to a recovering deer population, may instead be explained by a decline of the red fox, along with his UCSC co-authors, A. Marm Kilpatrick, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology; Taal Levi, and Chris Wilmers (see below). Whales, Science, and "Scientific Whaling" in the International Court of Justice Marc Mangel, Distinguished Research Professor, Mathematical Biology and Director, Center for Stock Assessment Research at UCSC leads a compelling discussion about using science as the foundation to interpret international law. Mangel discusses his involvement in the March 2014 International Court of Justice ruling that has effectively ended Japan's annual killing of almost 1,000 whales a year (a win for both whales and for science).
Pradip K Mascharak does "green chemistry" that could help with targeting medicine delivery.
Matthew McCarthy, associate professor of ocean sciences and partners have found compelling evidence for an extensive biological community living in porous rock deep beneath the seafloor. The microbes in this hidden world appear to be an important source of dissolved organic matter in deep ocean water, a finding that could dramatically change ideas about the ocean carbon cycle. More 12/10. Deep-sea corals record dramatic long-term shift in Pacific Ocean ecosystem 12/13. see Coral Reefs.
Erin McCreles found that control of invasive species are effective conservation tools, but conservation scientists have lacked tools for identifying where these efforts will have the greatest impact until now, island ecosystems. 9/16
Marcia McNutt is head of the US Geological Survey; she studied geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, where she earned a Ph.D. in Earth sciences. Her research includes studies of ocean island volcanism in French Polynesia, continental break-up in the Western United States, and uplift of the Tibet Plateau. She has participated in 15 major oceanographic expeditions, and served as chief scientist on more than half of those voyages. Formerly head of MBARI. McNutt is a NAUI-certified scuba diver and she trained in underwater demolition and explosives handling with the U.S. Navy UDT and Seal Team.
Adam Millard-Ball, UCSC assistant professor of environmental studies, co-authored a study that predicts oil demand to peak around 2035. He also studies climate change and carbon trading. See Fossil Fuels.
John Mock works to remove landmines and preserve wildlife in Afghanistan.
Bus tracking in realtime at UCSC started by students of computer engineering Professor Katia Obrackza, who initially pitched it as a project for undergraduates looking for a senior design project. Another group of students on the project, working with electrical engineering Professor Stephen Petersen, had to figure out the best location for an array of base stations to receive the GPS signals.The web app piece—SlugRoute—was designed by Wade "Simba" Khadder, an undergraduate in computer science who took a prototype to a UCSC Hackathon. 4/16.
David Palleros works in Green Chemistry.
Ingrid Parker has taught in the College 8 Core series, studies invasive plant species, and has helped save an endangered wetlands plant species.
Adina Paytan does research on how dust affects algae in oceans. Her recent work looks at ocean acidification which affects coral.
Ken Pedrotti co-teaches a green energy course EE/CLEI 81C.
Stacy Philpott, environmental studies associate professor and CASFS interim executive director, is helping to meet the goals of the campus’s Real Food Challenge,” a commitment to source 40 percent of UCSC Dining’s food from local, sustainable sources by 2020. Her lab has ample opportunities for learning about insect ecology and taxonomy, urban ecology, agroecosystems, and tropical biology. We are usually looking for students to do lab work during the school year and offer international and local research opportunities during the summer.
Donald Potts, a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology is studying increasing ocean acidification, which has often focused on its potential effects on coral reefs, but broader disruptions of biological processes in the oceans may be more significant.
Daniel Press is a professor of environmental studies and executive director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. His research interests include environmental politics and policy, land preservation, water quality regulation and management, recycling, industrial ecology, and policy analysis. He is the author of multiple books, including this year’s American Environmental Policy: The Failures of Compliance, Abatement and Mitigation. video
Ravi Rajan's research focuses on environmental issues in governance, corporate responsibility, globalization, entrepreneurship, technology choice, and risk and disaster management. Rajan has served with Environment and History, American Society for Environmental History and National Science Foundation. Rajan has also served as the President of the Board of Directors of Pesticide Action Network, North America(PANNA). Environmental rights lecture (video). As a student journalist, he was an eyewitness to Bhopal.
Peter Raimondi, professor and chair of ecology and evolutionary biology, studies marine reserves' effects on fish. Starfish wasting disease 12/14.3/18 update with Miner.
Greg Rau, a senior scientist in the Institute of Marine Sciences and his team have found a carbon capture technique that produces hydrogen fuel, offsets ocean acidification 5/13.
Annalisa Rava: Human-Animal Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Animals in Science Fiction, Science Fiction and the Post-Human Body. She observed of wild chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, for the purpose of enriching the teaching of her writing class.
Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is coauthor of a study that indicates that the sensitivity of Earth's temperature to increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is greater than has been expected on the basis of climate models that only include rapid responses. Update: Ravelo led a nine-week expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) to the Bering Sea last summer. Deep sediment cores retrieved from the Bering Sea floor indicate that the region was ice-free all year and biological productivity was high during the last major warm period in Earth's climate history. "Evidence from the Pliocene Warm Period is relevant to studies of current climate change because it was the last time in our Earth's history when global temperatures were higher than today," Ravelo said. More 12/10. Update 6/12.overview.
Colleen Reichmuth has worked with marine mammals since 1990, conducting research in the areas of comparative cognition, bioacoustics, and behavioral ecology. Male elephant seals use 'voice recognition' to identify rivals, study by graduate student Caroline Casey and research biologist Colleen Reichmuth finds (video) 8/15. Sea lions exposed to algal toxin show impaired spatial memory see Marine Mammals. 11/16 update: sea otter hunting
Alan Richards teaches a popular course Blood and Oil on the Middle East.Current sustainability course Spr 08
Marco Rolandi works with Materials Science and Engineering Initiative focuses on sustainability 6/17 associate professor of electrical engineering who looks to biological systems for inspiration in developing innovative materials, including biocompatible materials for implantable medical devices. One spin-off from his lab is a biodegradable alternative to polyurethane and polystyrene foams for surfboards, uses shrimp shells, discarded by the millions of tons per year, to make a sustainable structural foam. see Bio-mimicry.
William Satterthwaite wrote the best publication for 2009 in the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. The paper, "Steelhead life history on California's Central Coast: Insights from a state-dependent model," presents a mathematical model for the life histories of steelhead in small coastal streams. Steelhead are rainbow trout that migrate to the sea and repeatedly return to their home streams to spawn.
Beth Shapiro, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and her colleagues analyzed genome-wide DNA sequence data from bears, and found that polar bears are a remarkably homogeneous species with no evidence of brown bear ancestry, whereas the ABC Islands brown bears show clear evidence of polar bear ancestry. She's also working with a project within Long Now called “Revive & Restore,” which is pushing to make de-extinction a reality, starting with the fabled passenger pigeon and moving on to the woolly mammoth. See “TEDxDeExtinction” . How to Clone a Mammoth.book and video 6/15. [Ice Age bison and human migration] 6/16. UCSC Biologist Upasna Sharma wins NIH Director’s New Innovator Award Prestigious $1.5 million grant will fund Sharma’s research on how environmental effects can be passed down from parents to their offspring 10/19.
Mary Silver researches algae blooms. 2008.
Barry Sinervo and students are creating games to teach about lizard behavior. Recent research shows early effects of global warming 5/10. More links(audio) on Sinervo's work. He also co-wrote a paper showing how rock-scissors-paper dynamic works in biology. Investigation of disappearing amphibians 3/13. [news.ucsc.edu/2016/05/leopard-lizards.html Drought helps predict how climate change might affect an endangered species] 5/16.
Lisa C. Sloan, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Director of the Climate Change and Impacts Laboratory, has a new paper on effect of irrigation cooling, and a map of Santa Cruz sea level rise.
Don Smith and graduate student, Molly Church, who is now at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine have established lead poisoning in condors from ammunition 11/13 update.
Mark Snyder researches climate change. Radio interview 09
Dena Spatz New UCSC study maps the world’s most vulnerable island species and identifies invasive species as a key threat to their survival 10/17.
Carson College instructor Glenn Stewart worked on Exxon Valdez cleanup and is breeding and releasing hawks, falcons and other predatory birds. History of saving the falcon from DDT extinction video. Student internship, Zeta Glucs (video) (audio interview).
Elizabeth Stephens The Listening to the Earth, research cluster, brings together graduate students and faculty at both UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz to explore the diverse creative possibilities that promise to emerge out of conscious collaboration between environmental studies, landscape architecture, the visual arts and performance studies. video
Sean Swezy, College 8 instructor, works on organic sustainable farming techniques.
Ali Shakouri works to make energy use more efficient. his website.
Andy Szasz also studies Environmental Justice. New book on Inverted Quarantine is Shopping Our Way to Safety [2].
UC Santa Cruz biologist [http://werc.ucsc.edu/Grad%20Students/Nicole/thometz.html Nicole Thometz set out to quantify the energy demands of a growing sea otter pup], as it accounts for high mortality rates among female sea otters in some areas. 6/14 See also Marine Mammals.
John Thompson's research may help us learn to cope with ecological change, distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. In Relentless Evolution, Thompson argues that species must be able to evolve constantly or they will not persist.
Tim Tinker researches sea otters. Video Info on otter mortality. 8/10 update on work with Hatfield. Otters clean water 8/13.
Jonathan Trent is working on a plan to grow new biofuel by farming micro-algae in floating offshore pods that eat wastewater from cities. He has done prototypes in Santa Cruz. Energy from floating algae pods Call it "fuel without fossils": (TEDtalk 9/12). TEDxSC talk (video). TEDxSan Jose.
Slawek Tulaczyk investigates effects of global warming on ice sheets in Anarctica. Tulaczyk and Andrew Fisher, both professors of Earth and planetary sciences, will drill through a half-mile of ice to penetrate subglacial Lake Whillans and study hidden processes that govern the dynamics of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Link. 9/12 update on frozen methane, which could set up global warming feedback loop. Scientists drill through half mile of Antarctic ice for data on ice sheet stability UC Santa Cruz glaciologist Slawek Tulaczyk is a chief scientist of the WISSARD project, which has just reached another milestone. 1/15. See Arctic.
John Vesecky Electrical Engineering is working on Greening the Wharf in Santa Cruz. He also does HF radar design and construction and observation of ocean surface winds, waves and currents with applications to coastal and deep water ocean processes; project MEDSAT.
Erin Vogel studies primate population.
Kerstin Wasson is adjunct professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and research coordinator for the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. In the 1920s, San Francisco oystermen harvested Olympia oysters from Elkhorn Slough by the bushel. Overharvesting, however, soon decimated the population of these tasty little oysters, the only native oyster on the Pacific coast. They are now rare in Elkhorn Slough and in danger of going locally extinct. Kerstin Wasson, research coordinator for the reserve and an adjunct associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. UPDATE: According to a paper by Wasson and grad student Brent Hughes, excessive nutrient levels in Elkhorn Slough cause algal blooms and degrade the habitat for fish and wildlife in many parts of the slough. 10/11 4/18 update award : Wetlands Hero. Wetlands.
Peter Weiss-Penzias Mercury-Laden Fog Swirls Over California Coastal Cities (music) 1/16. see Chemicals. Coastal fog linked to high levels of mercury found in mountain lions, study finds Led by Peter Weiss-Penzias, an environmental toxicologist who has pioneered the study of pollutants in coastal fog, the study is the first to trace the atmospheric source of super-toxic methylmercury in the terrestrial food web up to a top predator. 12/19
Terrie Williams, professor of biology and director of the Marine Mammal Physiology Project (MMPP, (video) working with animals that are trained to voluntarily cooperate in the data collection process, Dr. Williams seeks to answer the important question of what it costs these animals to survive in the ocean) at UCSC's Long Marine Laboratory sprang into action and were ready when an oil-soaked otter arrived from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where she had been stabilized. Williams has also done research on seals during the Antarctic winter, the harshest season in the harshest environment on Earth. Rare Monk seal rescue. new book on endangered monk seals. (image). Williams looks back at otter rescue at the Exxon Valdez spill 25 years ago. 3/14. Heart research 9/15. Heart monitors on wild narwhals reveal alarming responses to stress: As sea ice melts, new findings add to concerns about the effects of ocean noise and increased human activity on deep-diving Arctic whales 2/18 see Marine Mammals
Chris Wilmers and Terrie Williams', a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, will team up to explore questions of puma behavior, physiology, and ecology using radio collars. Cougar GPS story. Story of Atlas, who crosses Hwy 17. With Jim Estes, Sea otters fight global warming, 9/12 audio interview.UCSC students get first-hand scientific experience while monitoring the elusive big cats as part of the Puma Project.(video). In the first published results of more than three years of tracking mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains, UC Santa Cruz researchers document how human fragmentation of habitat affects the predators' habits. 4/13.*** UCSC helps capture and safely release puma near downtown 5/13.
James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences. is doing Global Warming research with Christina Ravelo, a professor of ocean sciences and more. elected to NAS as his research has reshaped scientists' views of long-term climate change and rapid climate transitions during the past 65 million years. 4/17.
Erika Zavaleta, environmental studies, conceived new Conservation Scholars Program will partner with other organizations including Santa Cruz-based SACNAS: Advancing Chicano/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science. 11/15. Ecosystems of California is a new comprehensive reference of California’s ecological abundance featuring contributions from 149 experts including 19 with ties to UC Santa Cruz. Co-edited by Erika Zavaleta and Harold Mooney. 1/16. See also Streams of Diversity 6/18.
Jin Zhang, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSC, showed that nano-thin film this combination of techniques has a synergistic effect, markedly enhancing the performance of photovoltaic cells (see earlier story). In a new study, Zhang teamed up with Yat Li, assistant professor of chemistry. 2/10
Jonathan Zehr, professor of ocean sciences and his team has found an unusual microorganism in the open ocean may force scientists to rethink their understanding of how carbon and nitrogen cycle through ocean ecosystems. This may have implication for global warming.
Emeritus Faculty
Terry Burke and Kenneth Pomeranz (eds), The Environment and World History.(review) University of California Press, 2009.
Jean Langenheim, a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology, is an eminent plant ecologist and leading authority on plant resins. She broke new ground for women in science, and worked with Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard, his images founder of ethno-botany.
Burney Le Boeuf has conducted extensive research on the behavioral ecology and physiology of marine mammals. In particular, he is known for his work on sharks and elephant seals, as well as their diving, foraging, and migratory behavior. While much of his research was conducted at nearby Año Nuevo Island Reserve, Le Boeuf has led expeditions to research sites throughout the world, including Mexico, Argentina, the Galapagos Islands, and Japan. He is the author of three books and more than 157 peer-reviewed articles.
William H. “Bill” Friedland, professor emeritus of community studies and sociology at UC Santa Cruz, whose life and career encompassed the major social movements of the 20th century, from labor struggles during and after World War II, to farm worker and youth movements of the 1960s, to the agriculture-food awareness of today.
Todd Newberry renowned Santa Cruz bird expert, who worked with a student on a book project to teach some of the basic skills of becoming a “nature detective” at the Arboretum. oral history. hummingbird event 2/16.
Manuel Pastor studies Environmental Justice issues. Now at USC Bioneers video How do we build movements based on vision and values?
John Pearse, a pioneer in ocean research, studies temporal patterns of reproduction in marine invertebrate. Works with NOAA Limpets, high school monitoring program link. More, includinghis role as President of the California Academy of Sciences. UCSC and the Academy recently established links which allow graduate students with interests in systematic biology to be co-sponsored by Academy scientists.
Michael Soule (short bio), one of the founders of conservation biology, Paul Ehrlich's student, and currently an advocate of Rewilding, that is bringing back extinct ecosystems and even species This idea has been picked up by Stewart Brand.A Soule Interview. Co-author of Ghost Bears. tropic cascades. See also Wildlands Network, working to connect islands of bio-diversity. web, new Collected papers.
Stuart A. Schlegel Wisdom from a Rainforest: The Spiritual Journey of an Anthropologist.
Lincoln Taiz, professor emeritus of molecular, cell and developmental biology, gave the Emeriti Lecture at UC Santa Cruz on Wednesday, November 19. "Agriculture, Population Growth, and the Challenge of Climate Change video. He explains and supports GMO's.
In Memoriam
Powerful video: She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite...Hurting...Worth dying for. More Than 900 Environmental Advocates Slain In A Decade As Concern For The Planet Grows. 4/14 (See Terry Freitas below).
Camila Lee, College Eight environmental studies, was from Fallbrook in San Diego County. She wrote an excellent study of the environmental health aspects of Maquiladoras.
Alan Chadwick helped establish organic farming at UCSC and propagate the ideas widely. He came to UCSC at the behest of his friend, a countess who was the widow of a member of the Resistance who was killed in the retribution after the failed Hitler assassination. Film on him at McHenry VT8996 called Garden Song History of organic farming at UCSCArticle. A play based on him. video of his garden today.
Richard Cooley founded the Environmental Studies department and was important in protecting the polar bear and Alaska wilderness, and funded Rachel Carson so she could finish Silent Spring.
Ben Crow studied inequality around water and land issues. Before becoming a social scientist, Professor Ben Crow trained and worked as an engineer in London and Africa, and was an activist and volunteer in South Asia. His PhD is from Edinburgh University in Scotland, and he also taught at the Open University in the UK and at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Author of, among others, The Atlas of Global Inequalities, with Suresh Lodha). More about Professor Crow’s work can be found at: link.
Ray Dasmann was one of the pioneers in developing the the conservation concepts of "eco-development," and "biological diversity," and identified the crucial importance of recognizing indigenous peoples and their cultures in efforts to conserve natural landscapes. These concepts over the last thirty years have coalesced in American and international environmental thinking as "sustainable development," the key dynamic concept informing contemporary conservation efforts. Dasmann pleaded to grant legal rights to Nature nearly half a century ago, and it has been the subject of numerous "deep ecology" and some law articles and books Article. A remembrance. SlugMap.
Tony Fink, UCSC's distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, passed away on March 3, 2008, following a year-long illness. During Tony's forty-year career in academia, he made many contributions to the field of biophysical chemistry. With more than 200 scientific publications, 20 book chapters, and three books, he was a world authority on protein folding. Mistakes in this molecular process lead to degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease. Tony's research was to understand what goes wrong and to design treatments to repair the damage or prevent it from happening. He worked tirelessly towards the goal of designing potential drugs and therapeutic methods to combat Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Tony was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences in 2004, won the BioSTAR Outreach Ambassador of the Year Award in 2002, as well as the Division of Physical & Biological Sciences' Outstanding Faculty Award in 2007. Those who wish to honor Professor Fink may do so by making a donation to the Tony Fink Memorial Fund to support students and research in Chemistry and Biochemistry. Donations can be sent to Attn: Tony Fink Memorial, 1156 High Street, MS: PBSci Development, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064.
Physicist Stanley Flatté, whose work on wave propagation led to important contributions in the fields of atmospheric optics, ocean acoustics, and seismology, is important to oil exploration.
Terry Freitas, UCSC grad student killed trying to stop Indigenous people from being harmed by oil company.Article. In choosing to honor Freitas, who exemplified "the highest UCSC ideals of service to others," the Alumni Association made its first posthumous award. A cafe has been named for him.
Ken Norris, cetologist who helped establish Natural Reserves and Long Marine Lab oral history online and in Science Library QH31.N67 J37 1999. "His pioneering investigations in marine mammalogy confirmed dolphin echolocation skills in a series of elegant experiments. Much of what is now known about whales and dolphins, specifically their social and familial interactions is due to his work. His expertise in marine mammalogy also resulted in his strong influence on public policy in the crafting of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. His leadership and research were also instrumental in the national campaign to reduce the dolphin kill in tuna fishing. Norris was the author of over a hundred scientific papers and several books on dolphins and porpoises."
Maya Karin Peterson, beloved professor of history and friend to many in the UCSC community, died unexpectedly in childbirth alongside her daughter, Priya Luna. Her research engaged questions of health, the environment, and the transnational histories of science and technology in the modern era. Her first monograph, Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia (Cambridge UP, 2019), was a finalist for the Central Eurasian Studies Society’s Award for Best Book in History. She played an outsized role in departmental and university leadership for an emerging scholar, chairing an interdisciplinary faculty search for SEACoast – UCSC's Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions – and helping to reinvigorate UC Santa Cruz's Center for World History. The Humanities Division has established The Maya K. Peterson Memorial Fund.
Don Rothman: Avoiding the Humiliation of Silence in the Face of Cruelty and Injustice.VIDEO (.mov download). Many students said his talk was a highlight of the Core course. Sadly, Don passed away in his sleep in early December 2012; he will be much missed. Don hosts a dynamic discussion with Oakes College founding provost and emeritus Professor J. Herman Blake (2012).
Ph.D. student Jessica Roy was struck and killed by a car while walking in Nairobi in 2004. She was studying women and water use in Kenya. Ben Crow and others have continued her work, using GPS, and found that women invest their freed-up time in income-generating activities such as raising seedlings for coffee and tea growers in the region or raising livestock.
Not a Slug, but Stephen H. Schneider of Stanford played a key role in the global warming debate.Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate. Sadly, Dr. S passed away in July 2010, a remembrance. Video of recent talk (and some remembrances).
Ronald Schusterman, a pioneering marine mammal scientist and an expert in animal behavior and comparative psychology, his work led to some of the first, most creative, and most enduring approaches to training and studying marine mammals in captivity.
Stephen D. Vance (College 8, '79, American studies) was killed by gunmen during an ambush in Pakistan, where he directed a U.S.-funded job creation and workforce development project in the country's FATA region.
Kenneth V. Thimann – Founding Crown Provost and Arboretum, a pioneering researcher in the field of plant physiology; in 1934, isolated pure auxin, an important plant-growth hormone and proved that auxin promotes growth, discoveries that led to the development of a widely used synthetic auxin, 2,4-D. Use of this chemical prevents the premature falling of fruit and stimulates cut stems to grow abundant roots. Because high concentrations of auxins are toxic to most plants, synthetic auxins are effective weed killers, leading to the Vietnam-era herbicide Agent Orange.
Bill Walton, Predatory Bird Research Group leader, was instrumental in saving the Peregrine Falcon, the fastest animal in existence, from extinction. Article on falcon comeback The history of falcon recovery is told by him in this 42 minute video.
Gabriel Zimmerman (STV '02), "community outreach director for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. Zimmerman, 30, graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2002 with a degree in sociology. He was one of six people fatally wounded in Tucson, Ariz., in the shooting rampage that left his boss critically wounded. A room in the Capitol has named in his honor. He was also remembered at a ceremony marking one year. His father Ross is determined that Gabe be remembered for how he lived, not how he died (including a charity a footrace). Gabe's fiancee supports banning large ammo clips that made the shootings possible. Gabe took a course with Prof. Paul Lubeck on globalization information and social change, part of UCSC’s Global Information Internship Program (GIIP), which mobilizes UCSC students to work for civil rights, sustainable development, and social justice causes, while immersing them in the skills they need to succeed as organizers, from social entrepreneurship to web design. This ambitious young man was in good company among UCSC alumni; he was part of a group of former GIIP students who Lubeck described as a 'Washington crew.' Another UCSC grad from the program, Daniel Weiss, is chief of staff for Congressman George Miller (D-Calif.). Another graduate is Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Dana Priest." More. The Gabriel Zimmerman Meeting Room in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center was dedicated (video) in honor of “Gabe”, killed at the January 8, 2011, shooting in Tucson, that left then Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) severely injured. Astronaut Mark Kelly, who spoke for his wife, remarked that Gabe, ran toward the victims when the gunman opened fire. He was the only legislative staff member ever killed in the line of duty and Speaker Boehner (who has done nothing to reduce gun violence) pointed out that the meeting room named in his honor was the first room in the Capitol complex to be dedicated to a staff member. Vice President Biden (who has taken the lead on gun control) also spoke, along with Gabe's parents. 12/15 update: Moved by Zimmerman’s commitment to public service, two UC Santa Cruz alums, Alex Clemens (Porter, '89, international politics) and Jonathan Klein (Merrill, '89, politics), created a scholarship fund in his honor. Now, Professor Emeritus David E. Kaun, a founding faculty member in economics, will match up to $20,000. The five Zimmerman scholarship winners to date are pursuing activities in social justice ranging from technology, medicine, and human rights. 3/18 Update
UC People and Affiliates
Malaria Resistant Mosquitoes: UC Irvine Scientists Create New Genetically Modified Mosquito. A non-GMO approach for Dengue Fever (audio) 6.12
Eric Berlow is an ecologist and network scientist who specializes in not specializing. He helped found, and directs, the University of California’s first environmental research center in Yosemite National Park. After radio-collaring wolves in Alaska and tending bar in Paris, he got his Ph.D. in marine ecology studying the interconnectedness of species in nature. As a research scientist with the USGS he focuses on building better links between science and management of protected mountain ecosystems. Eric is helping apply network approaches to sustainable ecotourism development in the Arctic, and is co-owner of a green café in Oakland, California. He is currently spearheading ‘ecomimetic’ approaches to corporate sustainability by visualizing and modeling energy consumption through complex, interconnected supply chains. Here's a brilliant TEDtalk on data visualization, and the simplicity beyond complexity. He co-authored an important paper on bio-diversity.
Physicist Steven Chu as the Secretary of Energy, and the first Nobel Prize winner to be appointed to a U.S. Cabinet, was given the job of turning the dusty Department of Energy into the incubator for tomorrow's clean-power solutions. Named 2009 Hero of the Planet by Time Magazine. interview about CA Read more. His blog
Livermore Labs makes stoves to help protect women in Darfur. Video from KQED Quest.
U.S. Representative Sam Farr (video bio) has been a champion of organic farming since his service in the Peace Corps in Colombia in 1964. While in the California State Assembly, Farr authored the 1990 California Organic Standards Act, the first state law defining organic agriculture. This legislation became the basis for the National Organic Program’s federal organic standards. Farr now serves as co-chair of the National Organic Caucus in the House of Representatives and is vice chair of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. See UCSC food movement history
Professor Tyrone Hayes at the University of California, Berkeley, and in ponds around the world, studies frogs and other amphibians. He's become an active critic of the farm chemical atrazine, which he's found to interfere with the development of amphibians' endocrine systems. TEDtalk video. PBS Frontline Thin Green Line in Salinas Valley CA #1 in use of pesticides. Hayes has been viciously attacked by industry hacks (video) 2/14. See Amphibians.
State Architect and UC Berkeley professor emeritus Sim Van der Ryn was championing innovations like solar roof panels and rainwater catchment systems before most people had even heard of them. The former state architect of California has a new book, "Design for an Empathic World: Reconnecting to People, Nature and Self." audio interview and links. See Sustainable Architecture.
Joby Energy is a local company looking for people to create high altitude wind. images and video. Its founder is also working on an electric flying car. Its CEO is a College 8 Fellow. More.
