Environmental scientists and engineers who understand the global dimensions of polar science are needed to address the challenges of rapid environmental change. Upon graduation, Dartmouth IGERT students will be part of a new cohort of scientists and engineers trained to have an international perspective and an interdisciplinary approach to global climate issues.
The growing scarcity of natural resources and other problems caused by climate change are having particularly adverse affects on Northern communities. We encourage Native students interested in research relevant to their communities to apply to the program. Click here for more information about Native American activities at Dartmouth, and the College's long history of commitment to Native American student education.
2009 STUDENTS
Follow our students to Greenland through their blogs. Lauren Culler is researching Arctic aquatic ecosystems and Simone Whitecloud and Laura Levy joined IGERT faculty on a trip to Kangerlussuaq to plan for next year's Greenland Field Seminar.
Julia is a first-year graduate student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. In 2006 she received a B.A. in biology from Grinnell College, in Grinnell, Iowa. She was awarded a Grinnell Corps Fellowship and spent the next year participating in arid ecology studies at the Gobebeb Center, an environmental research and sustainable development NGO in the Namib Desert. The following year she worked at the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia, where she conducted research on the local impact of climate change and on opportunities for carbon market development. Most recently she worked at Climate Central, a hybrid climate change research and media organization in Princeton, New Jersey. As an IGERT Fellow, Julia intends to research the influence of environmental change on ecosystem function in polar regions. Always looking to enhance the relevance and applicability of her research, she will study the impact of environmental change on the ecosystem services valuable to people. Julia hails from New York City and spends her free time enjoying the outdoors, playing and coaching soccer, and doing anything that involves live music or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—or, preferably, both.
Lauren is working on her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in Dr. Brad Taylor’s aquatic ecology lab. She came to Dartmouth from the University of Maryland, where she completed a B.S. in Zoology in 2005, and an M.S. in Entomology in 2008. Lauren has a strong background in entomology and aquatic ecology and as part of IGERT plans to research how environmental change affects aquatic invertebrates in alpine and polar streams. A Maryland native, Lauren enjoys crabbing in the tributaries of the Chesapeake and hiking in the Appalachians. She also takes advantage of every opportunity to travel far and wide to collect insects. You can keep up with her research in Arctic aquatic ecosystems in Greenland at her Greenland Aquatic blog online.
Laura received her MS in Geology from Northern Arizona University, where she studied Holocene glacier fluctuations in the Ahklun Mountains in southwestern Alaska. She worked for the Soundscape Program at Grand Canyon National Park, collecting and analyzing acoustic data and working on the park's overflights plan to mitigate aircraft noise over the canyon. Laura is excited to work with Dr. Meredith Kelly studying glacial records of climate change in Greenland. In her free time Laura enjoys hiking, riding horses, and volunteering for Paw Placement of Northern Arizona, a local animal rescue organization - she and her husband have 4 rescue dogs of their own. Laura and Simone Whitecloud were in Greenland this summer with four IGERT faculty planning for the Greenland Field Seminar beginning Summer 2010. Follow their IGERT Trip to Greenland blog of the trip.
Chris is working toward a PhD in engineering under Dr. Donald Perovich at the U.S. Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL). His research interests, which range from zero energy greenhouses to Arctic ice monitoring buoys, are connected by a passion for both understanding and mitigating changes in our climate. As part of IGERT, he hopes to focus on building scientific understanding of seasonal ice melt processes in the Arctic. Chris chose his graduate program based on its opportunity for field work and spends as much free time as possible outdoors hunting, hiking, fishing, and canoeing. Chris is a native of Pennsylvania but has called Hanover home for the past six years. He lives with his girlfriend, Norah, chickens, rabbits, and a free-spirited beagle named Tracks.
Simone has been working on a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with Dr. Mark McPeek at Dartmouth. She received a BS in Biology and a BA in French from the University of San Francisco in 2002. She completed a master’s degree in ecology and systematics from San Francisco State University in May 2009. Simone is interested in plant interactions in arctic and alpine systems. Is facilitation occurring, what are its consequences, and how will climate change affect these dynamics? She is working in several mountain ranges in Northeastern United States, and will work in Greenland next summer. She is also interested in Native uses of these plants, and how the use of identical species compares between the Abenaki of the Northeast and the indigenous Greenlanders. Will climate change affect the benefits of these plants? Simone and Laura Levy were in Greenland this summer with four IGERT faculty planning for the Greenland Field Seminar beginning Summer 2010. Follow their IGERT Trip to Greenland blog. Read a Dartmouth Graduate Studies profile of Simone online.
Rebecca will be working on her PhD in Engineering Science with Dr. Laura Ray's autonomous polar robots. Her research will involve control theory, signal processing, and electronic instrumentation in order to create a robot capable of navigating polar regions to collect measurements of snow and atmospheric conditions. She received her B.S from the University of
Illinois at Chicago in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in Neural Engineering, but has decided to wander from this field in pursuit of an analogous goal: the protection and advancement of the world's health through environmentalism, rather than through medicine. Born, raised, and slightly sequestered in the urban scene of Chicago, she is excited to move to a place where she can see the stars and smell the trees. She revels in any opportunity to balance her engineer's brain with artistic creativity, and can often be found playing the piano, sewing, drawing, and writing.
Gifford will begin his PhD adventure in Earth Sciences working in Dr. Robert Hawley's Glaciology lab. He circuitously came to Dartmouth via an Honours degree in Antarctic Studies from the University of Tasmania at Hobart (2007). Prior to that, Gifford studied at the University of California at Berkeley, fought wildland fires in the western US, served as a Team Leader and Service Learning Coordinator with AmeriCorps (NCCC), and experienced polar life via the US Antarctic Program. As part of IGERT and under the tutelage of Dr. Hawley, Gifford hopes to investigate the role of glaciers within the climate change conversation. Born and raised in California, Gifford enjoys the outdoors, improvisational acting, and helicopters.
JULIA BRADLEY-COOK
LAUREN CULLER
LAURA LEVY
CHRIS POLASHENSKI
SIMONE WHITECLOUD
REBECCA WILLIAMS
GIFFORD WONG