Sarah Keegan Headquarters, Washington, D.C. June 22, 1990 (Phone: 202/453-1548) RELEASE: 90-87 NASA SELECTS 37 STUDENTS FOR GLOBAL CHANGE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Continuing its efforts to encourage the next generation of scientists and engineers, NASA has selected 37 graduate students at U.S. universities to take part in the Global Change Fellowship Program. The Global Change Fellows, students pursuing Ph.D. degrees, were selected by a panel of representatives from the Earth Science and Applications Division, Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) and the Educational Affairs Division at NASA and from professional scientific societies and universities. Fellowships of $22,000, beginning in the 1990-91 academic year and renewable for 3 years, will be awarded based on research proposals submitted by the selected applicants. The selected students, from the United States and 10 other countries, represent 28 U.S. institutions of higher learning. Their proposals included research in atmospheric physics and chemistry, biogeochemistry, data and information systems, ecosystems, hydrology, oceanography and solid-Earth sciences. "The thing we hope to do," said Dr. Shelby G. Tilford, Director of OSSA's Earth Science and Applications Division, "is encourage and train a new generation of Earth scientists, who may one day be responsible for much of the analysis of data from the Earth Observing System." The Earth Observing System (EOS) is NASA's proposed series of space platforms that would carry suites of related instruments to study the interaction of Earth's biological, geological and chemical systems and the effects of those interactions on the environment. If approved by Congress in the Fiscal Year 1991 budget, the first EOS platform would be planned for a Fiscal Year 1998 launch. - more - - 2 - NASA hopes to have 150 fellowships in effect annually by the time the first platform is launched. The wide range of disciplines represented among the selected proposals reflect the interdisciplinary nature of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, which incorporates most of the agency's Earth science programs in an effort to understand the Earth as a unified system. The goal of Mission to Planet Earth, as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is to increase our understanding of the environment and improve ability to predict changes on a global scale. Though fellows are under no obligation to work for the government or even to continue in the Earth sciences, NASA is counting on the attraction and increasing emphasis on environmental issues to keep the students working in their areas. Fellowship proposals were evaluated based on academic excellence of the student, quality of the research proposal and relevance to NASA's role in the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The selected students, their institutions and areas of research are: Atmospheric Chemistry: Margaret K.M. Brown, University of Washington; Steven Andrew Lloyd, Harvard University; Young Sunwoo, University of Iowa; Renyi Zhang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Atmospheric Physics: Timothy Michael Del Sole, Harvard University; Carter Lee Grotbeck, University of Arizona; Stephen A. Klein, University of Washington; Jon Thomas Nelson, University of Washington; Thomas Carl Peterson, Colorado State University; Eric Paul Salathe, Yale University; Brian Jon Soden, University of Chicago. Biogeochemistry: David William Bolgrien, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Anne Marie Braunschweig, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Stephen Kimber Hamilton, University of California-Santa Barbara; Ann P. Kinzig, University of California-Berkeley. Data and Information Systems: James William Hardin, Texas A&M University. - more - - 3 - Ecosystems: Tracy Lea Benning, Kansas State University; William Michael Childress, Texas A&M University; Lars Lowell Pierce, University of Montana; John Frederick Weishampel, University of Virginia. Hydrology: Afshan Alam, Penn State University; Ana Paula Barros, University of Washington; Wesley Keith Berg, University of Colorado-Boulder; Vannaroth Nuth, University of Texas-Austin; Scott Dale Peckham, University of Colorado-Boulder; Richard Warner Turner, Iowa State University; Randolph H. Wynne, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Oceanography: Mary-Lynn Dickson, Oregon State University; Maria Christina Forbes, University of Miami; Jacqueline Kerry Holen, Stanford University; Laura Lee Landrum, University of Washington; Cecile Mauritzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Joanna Elizabeth Muench, University of Washington; Susan Elizabeth Wifjjels, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; Edward D. Zaron, Oregon State University. Solid Earth Sciences: Andrea Szilagyi, Purdue University; Thorvaldur Thodarson, University of Hawaii-Manoa. - end - NASA news releases and other NASA information is available electronically on CompuServe and GEnie, the General Electric Network for Information Exchange. For information on CompuServe, call 1-800-848-8199 and ask for representative 176. For information on GEnie, call 1-800-638-9636. 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