Five UW faculty members elected as AGU Fellows, plus more honors
The American Geophysical Union announced Sept. 13 that five University of Washington faculty members, including several from the College of the Environment, have been elected as new fellows, representing the departments of astronomy, Earth and space sciences, oceanography, global health and environmental and occupational health sciences.
The Fellows program recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space sciences through a breakthrough, discovery or innovation in their field. The five UW honorees are among 54 people from around the world in the 2023 Class of Fellows. AGU, the world’s largest Earth and space sciences association, annually recognizes a select number of individuals nominated by their peers for its highest honors. Since 1962, the AGU Union Fellows Committee has selected less than 0.1% of members as new fellows.
Here are the College of the Environment’s new AGU Fellows:
David Catling, professor of Earth and space sciences
Jody Deming, who holds the Karl M. Banse Endowed Professorship in oceanography
Eric Steig, professor and chair of Earth and space sciences
Also honored by AGU this year are four College of the Environment faculty members and researchers who have received other awards:
Join us for the 2023 Doug Walker Lecture, Building Resilience: Future-forward solutions for nature, health and the urban environment
We invite you to join us for an evening with Dr. Heather Tallis to explore how weaving nature more deliberately into the fabric of our urban communities can improve our quality of life. From urban parks to sustainable infrastructure, integrating nature into our cities makes us healthier, happier, smarter and safer.
Building Resilience: Future-forward solutions for nature, health and the urban environment, with Dr. Heather Tallis, Environmental Scientist and Professor
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 | 6:30 – 7:45 p.m. Town Hall Seattle, The Forum
1119 8th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101
$8, includes pre-reception
Dr. Heather Tallis, Assistant Director for Biodiversity and Conservation Sciences at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, leads cross-agency work on nature-based solutions, connects nature to economics, and initiated the National Nature Assessment. Additionally, she serves as a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, and as a board member for NSERC ResNet, a Canadian research network promoting resilient ecosystems. She brings her expertise from The Nature Conservancy, the Natural Capital Project, and global platforms like the World Economic Forum. Her influence extends to vital projects including the U.S. National Climate Assessment and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. She received her Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington, Seattle.
About the lecture series
The annual Doug Walker Lecture is named for Doug Walker, who was instrumental to the founding of the College of the Environment in 2009 as a co-chair of the Advisory Board and passionate advocate for the environment. Doug passed away tragically in 2016. In order to carry on and amplify Doug’s passion for outdoor recreation and his unending desire for learning, the College of the Environment hosts this annual lecture on health and nature.
A Q&A with Corey Garza, UW Environment Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Corey Garza begins his tenure as the UW College of the Environment Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and as a Professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences effective September 1. We sat down with Garza to talk about the vision for his new role, his approach to advancing equity and inclusion, and what he ultimately hopes to achieve.
What appeals to you most about coming to the College of the Environment to lead DEI efforts? What opportunities do you see?
Most of my DEI work has been within the ocean sciences, yet I’ve been interested in how you take those lessons learned about increasing diversity and apply them more broadly across STEM. One of the unique aspects of the College of the Environment is it gives us this opportunity since it represents so many different disciplines across STEM, from atmospheric sciences to ocean sciences and beyond.
It also is a chance to learn about some of the challenges that other disciplines in STEM have relative to increasing diversity. Each discipline has its own specific landscape, and what worked in the ocean sciences might not necessarily work in the geological sciences, for example. Because UW is internationally known, I think it may be an opportunity to take a lot of the lessons learned here and position Washington as a national and international leader in diversifying STEM.
How do you approach advancing DEI broadly while also identifying what’s needed at a specific place like the College of the Environment?
I think developing those personal, one-on-one interactions is very important — that’s been a big part for me. Each discipline or institution has its own set of external factors or specific barriers. Getting to know everyone in each place as best as I can, talking to the technical staff, to the office staff, to students, faculty, deans and provosts to really try to understand different perspectives and barriers, you start to get a more holistic understanding of what the internal challenges are to diversity. I think without building those connections, your diversity programs aren’t going to be as effective as they can be.
What are your initial goals and what are some of the pathways you’re thinking about to help achieve those goals?
Coming in, one of my first goals is to try to unify as best as I can the different DEI efforts already ongoing. I want to get an understanding of what programs are already in place, how can we start to organize so they are in parallel and in concert with each other, so that they’re working together. And while sharing what they have in common is important, we also need to understand where they differ. Atmospheric sciences challenges, for example, will be a little bit different relative to oceanography or forestry because of the unique landscapes that they’re working within.
Part of achieving this goal is visiting the different units in the College of the Environment to try to really understand the different communities, get to know them and have a visible presence there. I want them to know that there’s an office here, there are people working on this and that there’s someone that they can contact. I think if you don’t establish those lines of communication early on, any subsequent programs are bound not to be as effective as they can be.
What differences do you see in terms of DEI support needs between disciplines?
It is highly variable. But, for example, the ocean sciences can sometimes be perceived as less accessible than other sciences. You’re way out at sea, it’s a very remote, inaccessible place, the depictions of what ocean scientists look like can include expensive gear, like scuba, that can appear to be financially exclusive. Whereas doing something like geology might be viewed as a little bit more accessible. Something like a nearby hillside might be perceived as easier to get to and explore.
Another example is in the disability space, where the geosciences can be viewed as inaccessible because they often feature depictions of very physically active people, whether it’s a diver on a boat or the geologists hiking out in the field.
I had a student that had a specific medical condition and the other students were telling them, “Oh, you couldn’t be a marine biologist because you can’t scuba dive.” It was crushing for the student. And then they came into our marine drone program and became a drone pilot. That’s an important part of my group’s research approach: presenting multiple ways of being a scientist. I recall during the height of COVID closures, our drone group was allowed to go out and work because there’s one person, outside, with a drone. That student wound up being one of the few people able to go out to the field to collect data. When you have a stereotype or mindset about what it means to be a researcher or a scientist in a particular discipline, it can be one that’s very exclusive.
What gives you hope and drives you to do this work?
I’ve seen shifts in attitudes around this work. I think a lot of it has to do with the George Floyd murder and the protests of 2020, but I’m starting to see people a bit more open about it. Some of the funding agencies are starting to put significant resources behind their long-term DEI and broadening participation programs. I’m seeing people be a bit more intentional when thinking about this. People are asking how they can be better informed and educate themselves about these topics.
When I go to conferences, DEI sessions are more prominent. I have a group of colleagues that I work with, and we’d always joke that our session was either always at 8:00 AM at some point during the conference or the afternoon session on the last day of the conference. Now, we’re starting to see these sessions at times where their visibility is increased. And there are a lot more of them now, so that’s starting to give me a little bit of hope. I’m also seeing generation differences in how the next generation of scientists think about DEI issues. When I was in graduate school, other graduate students didn’t talk about DEI issues because there was a perception that it would distract from your research, and then could interfere with your tenure track line. Now, I see graduate students, postdocs, early career faculty and early career scientists starting to think about this.
I grew up in East LA, in a Mexican-American family where I was the first person who went to college, and I benefited a lot from programs that looked to engage students who weren’t historically in STEM. My own career path started in a high school STEM program at the LA County Natural History Museum. That was my transformative event, the first time I saw myself doing something other than what historically people in my family had done. So I went to college, and I benefited from great mentoring in school. My mentor was the only marine ecologist on campus at the time and he taught me what it meant to be a scientist. He was also actively involved in broadening participation in marine science, and taught me the importance of providing opportunities for others. He served as a role model for the work I’m currently involved in. So my own personal motivation is, how do I pay all of that forward? How do I not leave other people behind?
What do you think are some important personality traits to do this kind of work?
You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I see this a lot in DEI work, that when things become uncomfortable people want to disengage. You have to be willing to listen, and listen to actually learn. And we have to be willing to change. If you’re not, your program is not going to be effective. You have to be open to change and getting out of the ways you’ve traditionally done things, whether in science or the way that you’ve historically done DEI and outreach work. When you open yourself up to new opportunities and new ways of doing things, it can be a really uncomfortable feeling. You’re going to that scary spot that’s new and unknown, but it’s important if you’re going to grow personally and professionally.
What is the impact you wish to see in, say, five years down the road? Or even 50 years down the road?
I think short term, five years, I’d like to see some advancement on what faculty and staff are rewarded for. Some faculty and staff do a lot of work in the outreach and DEI space, but historically we don’t recognize that in STEM because it’s considered an add-on to research. I think the College is always going to have its base, portfolio type of research that they do, but are there other types of opportunities. Does some of your research have local relevance? Are there local Indigenous communities that see value in it? Are there other types of communities we haven’t thought about that see that? I’d like to see changes in the types of research opportunities there are, where local communities see themselves represented in our research.
And then 50 years down the road you start to see changes in the composition of science. Who’s becoming a scientist? Where are they coming from, what types of institutions are they coming from, who are we partnering with in the long term? Ultimately the composition of scientists starts to look more like the folks who live in the United States, the different communities that are out here.
Read more about what excites Garza about joining the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and his research approaches in the intertidal.
Polar experiments reveal seasonal cycle in Antarctic sea ice algae
In the frigid waters surrounding Antarctica, an unusual seasonal cycle occurs. During winter, from March to October, the sun barely rises. As seawater freezes it rejects salts, creating pockets of extra-salty brine where microbes live in winter. In summer, the sea ice melts under constant daylight, producing warmer, fresher water at the surface.
This remote ecosystem is home to much of the Southern Ocean’s photosynthetic life. A new University of Washington study provides the first measurements of how sea-ice algae and other single-celled life adjust to these seasonal rhythms, offering clues to what might happen as this environment shifts under climate change.
The study, published Sept. 15 in the International Society for Microbial Ecology’s ISME Journal, contains some of the first measurements of how sea-ice microbes respond to changing conditions.
“We know very little about how sea-ice microbes respond to changes in salinity and temperature,” said lead author Hannah Dawson, a UW postdoctoral researcher who did the work while pursuing her doctorate in oceanography at the UW. “And until now we knew almost nothing about the molecules they produce and use in chemical reactions to stay alive, which are important for supporting higher organisms in the ecosystem as well as for climate impacts, like carbon storage and cloud formation.”
The polar oceans play an important role in global ocean currents and in supporting marine ecosystems. Microbes form the base of the food web, supporting larger life forms.
“Polar oceans make up a significant portion of the world’s oceans, and these are very productive waters,” said senior author Jodi Young, a UW assistant professor of oceanography. “These waters support big swarms of krill, the whales that come to feed on those krill, and either polar bears or penguins. And the start of that whole ecosystem are these single-celled microscopic algae. We just know so little about them.”
UW a lead partner on new NSF-funded earthquake research center
The University of Washington is a lead partner on a new multi-institution earthquake research center based at the University of Oregon that the National Science Foundation announced Sept. 8 will receive $15 million over five years to study the Cascadia subduction zone and bolster earthquake preparedness in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
The Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center, or CRESCENT, will be the first center of its kind in the nation focused on earthquakes at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate slides beneath another.
The center will unite scientists studying the possible impacts of a major earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone, an offshore tectonic plate boundary that stretches more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from southern British Columbia to Northern California. The center will advance earthquake research, foster community partnerships, and diversify and train the next generation geosciences work force.
“The main goal of the center is to bring together the large group of geoscientists working in Cascadia to march together to the beat of a singular drum,” said center director Diego Melgar at the University of Oregon. “The center organizes us, focuses collaboration and identifies key priorities, rather than these institutions competing.”
Harold Tobin, the Paros Chair in Seismology and Geohazards, a professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, leads the effort at the UW.
“This NSF Center will be a game-changer for earthquake research in the Pacific Northwest; it will have direct, real-world public safety consequences for policy and planning,” Tobin said. “Initial CRESCENT efforts include identifying key faults — both on land and under the sea — that present earthquake and tsunami hazard, measuring and modeling movements of the crust that could show us where earthquake strain is building, and much more.”
NSF funds internet-connected ocean observatory through 2028
The U.S. National Science Foundation announced Sept. 21 that it is awarding a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations a new five-year cooperative agreement to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The University of Washington, Oregon State University and project lead Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will continue operating the OOI, a science-driven ocean observing network that delivers real-time data from more than 900 instruments to address critical science questions regarding the world’s oceans. The coalition was previously funded in 2018.
Under this new $220 million total investment, each of the three institutions will continue to operate and maintain the portion of the observatory for which it is currently responsible. The award amount for the UW is $52.4 million.
“I am extremely excited about this next five years of operations and the continued opportunities that the Regional Cabled Array will provide for unparalleled environmental data throughout entire ocean depths in some of the most dynamic environments on Earth,” said Deborah Kelley, a UW professor of oceanography and director of the Regional Cabled Array. “Decade-long measurements from more than 150 instruments sampling every second make this a perfect system to captivate users with ‘new eyes’ and AI applications, which will undoubtedly lead to important new discoveries and predictive capabilities.”