Sunday, April 28, 2013

Undergraduate Paul Lemieux Receives Prestigious NASA Internship!


Geography major Paul Lemieux will conduct research this summer at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama as a recipient of a prestigious NASA internship.  Paul will investigate how NASA remote sensing data can be used to better characterize and understand issues associated with human health and climate change, particularly in the SE USA, and how results can be used to assist decision makers in making better decisions on public health and the impacts of climate on humans and the environment.  Paul will work with NASA scientists to download the needed remote sensing data, analyze data, and integrate data into a GIS format to perform modeling of human and environmental factors that relate to climate and related impacts outcomes from climate models.

Paul and his wife, Brandy Lemieux, are both geography majors at UT.  They recently transferred from Memphis State University because they thought they could do more in Geography at UT.  Looks like this was a good move!  Paul has been working in our Laboratory of Paleoenvironmental Research, gaining first-hand experience in the study of past environmental change from sediment records as part of coursework in Geography 494 (photo below).  His NASA internship on remote sensing as applied to future environmental change will be a great complement to his 494 work, and an important professional experience.  Way to go, Paul! 


Undergraduate Major Sarah Bleakney receives NOAA Scholarship

More honors for geography major Sarah Bleakney!  We are pleased to share the great news that Sarah has received an Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  This prestigious award provides two years of financial support for Sarah's undergraduate work in geography and a research internship in summer 2014.  So it's research in Costa Rica this summer for Sarah and research with NOAA next summer!

But there's more!  Sarah also applied for and received a NASA internship.  She couldn't fit that one into her schedule so had to decline, but still an honor and WOW is all we can say!  Good thing we convinced Sarah to major in Geography instead of Global Studies, given all these great opportunities that have come her way!