Princeton - News - NSF Grant Funds Pilot Graduate Program to Add Environmental and Policy Component to Science and Engineering Education

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Distributed Jan. 9, 1997

NSF Grant Funds Pilot Graduate Program to Add Environmental and Policy Component to Science and Engineering Education

Princeton, N.J.--The National Science Foundation (NSF) has funded a pilot program that will enable selected Princeton graduate students to add an environmental and public policy component to graduate studies based in science and engineering departments. This Research Initiative in Science and Engineering (RISE) is one of the first programs of the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI), created in 1994 and directed by Simon Levin, George M. Moffett Professor of Biology; hence the program's acronym, "PEI-RISE."

Five graduate students were selected in December 1996 to participate in the program. They will receive partial tuition and stipend support for up to two years. Five more students will be funded next year.

To compete for the PEI-RISE fellowships, graduate students submitted proposals for research projects to be undertaken as fellows. PEI-RISE projects explore the environmental context of their thesis research. So PEI-RISE fellows will produce research papers that are the equivalent of a chapter of their PhD theses.

In addition to the research project, PEI-RISE fellows will take three graduate courses in the existing Science, Technology and Public Policy certificate program at the Woodrow Wilson School: Science, Technology and Policy; Methods in Science, Technology and Policy; and one elective.

Thomas Spiro, Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry and a principal investigator on the NSF grant, says that what appealed to the Princeton scientists putting together the proposal was "expanding normal graduate education in science and engineering toward a policy complement."

The Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, directed by Robert Socolow, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, will administer the grant because of its long experience in the intersection of science, technology, and policy, Spiro says.

Socolow, one of the grant's co-principal investigators, sees PEI-RISE as a prototype for educating science and engineering professionals so that they have the enhanced policy background appropriate for attacking "complex environmental problems in which social and scientific dimensions are intertwined."

Spiro notes the enhancing effect of PEI-RISE on the community of interests in environmental science and engineering at Princeton. Research pursued by the policy-minded graduate students will inevitably draw their advisors in their home departments into further engagement with environmental and public policy issues.

PEI director Levin points out that the new graduate program makes use of Princeton's existing strengths in politics, economics and public affairs. Its creation reflects the PEI approach to environmental studies. "What we've tried to do is to build on the strengths of the University," Levin says. "Princeton has, among other strengths, the Wilson School and vast policy expertise to be tapped."

Valerie Thomas, CEES research staff member, is the PEI-RISE coordinator. She worked with graduate students competing for the PEI-RISE fellowships this past fall to make each proposal as competitive as possible and to help the students find appropriate PEI-RISE advisors.

Here are the graduate student winners and their projects:

- What if soap enhances bacterial contamination of water?

Derick Brown, a third year graduate student, is doing his dissertation for a PhD in civil engineering on how surfactants (mostly detergents) promote the transport of bacteria in porous media, thereby enhancing bacterial contamination of ground water.

For his PEI-RISE environmental policy project, Brown will evaluate "current environmental policies based on the surfactant-enhanced transport of pathogenic microorganisms in ground water aquifers." How far, for instance, can a well that provides drinking water be located from a sewage plant given that surfactants from the plant enhance the area of bacterial contamination from the plant?

- What if zinc helps explain missing two gigatons of carbon?

A second year graduate student in Civil Engineering and Operations Research, Klaus Keller asks where are the missing two gigatons of carbon per year not accounted for in current models of the global carbon cycle. How the carbon is taken out affects predictions of levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and hence global warming.

Keller's dissertation looks at how traces of zinc in the ocean affect the growth of the phytoplankton (microscopic plants that drift in the ocean), which take up carbon dioxide. He hypothesizes that zinc, like iron, acts as a nutrient that spurs an increase in these plants and therefore an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide metabolized and taken out of the atmosphere.

- How to make photovoltaics commercially viable energy source

Fourth year graduate student in electrical engineering Adam Payne is conducting thesis research on "methods for improving the economic viability of amorphous silicon solar cells." These devices (one kind of photovoltaic technology, which in turn is one kind of renewable energy source) turn sunlight into electricity. The trick is to make them cost-competitive with current sources of bulk electricity production.

Payne's thesis research aims to make better one kind of photovoltaic device. His PEI-RISE project explores policies to accelerate the commercialization of this technology.

- How VOCs affect Nairobi's paint factory workers

Kathleen Purvis, second year graduate student in chemistry, is working on the "study of organo-metallic thin film growth on metal single crystals." That research aims at "contributing to the environmental quality of paint and coating technology, with the end goal of providing less expensive and higher quality products," she says.

For her PEI-RISE project she plans to study the environmental health effects of volatile organic compounds on workers in the paint manufacturing business of Nairobi, Kenya.

- Human-animal-vegetation interface in Venezuela

Jon Paul Rodriguez, fourth year graduate student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), is conducting thesis research that "uses data on the distribution and abundance of birds of North America over the last 30 years, to explore the patterns of range contraction of the species that are declining in abundance, and try to relate these patterns to the cause of the contraction, and the natural history of the species."

His PEI-RISE project focuses on "biodiversity, endangered species and human activity in Venezuela." He means to characterize complex ecosystems, particularly the human-animal-vegetation interface. "The Venezuelan government," he notes, "has accepted the responsibility for developing a 'Country Study' and a 'National Biodiversity Strategy,'" which he hopes to inform with his PEI-RISE project findings.