Happy Earth Day! This week, in celebration of our big beautiful planet, we’re featuring some of our amazing affiliates from across campus who work to help the planet thrive.
Dr. Christina Fuller at the UGA College of Engineering is working towards a future with cleaner air by identifying who air pollution impacts, what infrastructure solutions can help shield people from those impacts, and mobilizing communities to make those solutions a reality. Her combined background in engineering, consulting and environmental health allows her to approach environmental concerns like air pollution through a unique multi-disciplinary lens.
Dr. Meredith Welch-Devine, UGA Department of Anthropology, is working with farmers in rural France to learn from ancient pastoral systems how to sustain small-scale agriculture around the world. Her team is co-producing this knowledge with the farmers themselves, emphasizing the importance of community involvement in sustainable solutions.
Dr. Mary Freeman, UGA Odum School of Ecology, is a longtime advocate for healthy streams and something of an a-fish-ionado… hence the darter species named for her and her natural historian husband Bud Freeman, Percina freemanorum. Dr. Freeman has spent a career as a research ecologist with USGS while teaching UGA students, building relationships between academia and agencies, and conserving rare fishes around the Southeast.
Dr. Jenna Jambeck, College of Engineering, is well known at UGA for her innovative approach to cleaning up pollution in our oceans. She was named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow for her work seeking to show the scale and the efforts needed to address plastic waste, and co-created the Marine Debris Tracker app with another affiliate, Kyle Johnsen– check it out here: http://www.marinedebris.engr.uga.edu/
Dr. Lizzie King, UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, focuses on sustainable land use in ecosystems all over the world, from ranchlands in Kenya to tidal systems right here in Georgia. As a restoration ecologist, Dr. King works to integrate biosciences with the human dimensions of natural resource use to sustainably build functional ecosystems.
Dr. Susana Ferreira, UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, works to understand the economic implications of environmental change, both in how we respond to natural disasters and how we build economically viable solutions to environmental problems. By addressing sustainability through an economic lens, Dr. Ferreira is helping make a more sustainable future desirable for businesses, governments, insurance companies and consumers alike.
Happy Earth Day to all of our wonderful affiliates, staff, students and stakeholders- YOU are making the world a better place!