The Environmental Fellows Program The Environmental Fellows Program (EFP) at the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) is a 12-week summer fellowship opportunity that seeks to diversify the environmental field by cultivating the career aspirations of master’s and doctoral students from historically underrepresented groups by connecting students to work opportunities in environmental nonprofits, grant makers, and government sectors.
This program arose out of a collaboration between University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA), and the C. S. Mott Foundation. The collaborators recognized the need for a program to identify and train diverse students to work in environmental and philanthropic sectors. This fellowship is supported by several philanthropic organizations. The Environmental Fellows Program is looking for future leaders and decision-makers in the rapidly changing fields of conservation, justice, equity, and philanthropy. For more information on the program, please visit: https://environmentalfellows.yale.edu/ The Project Global Ocean and Land Alkalinization (GOAL-A) is a multi-institutional project funded by the Department of Energy (DOE). The spreading of silicate rocks across land and sea are being proposed as natural climate solutions that can remove carbon from the atmosphere. These strategies are called Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) and Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE). This collaboration between Yale University, Princeton University, Georgia Tech, and Texas A&M aims to create a system of connected Earth system models designed to track carbon fluxes in land- and ocean-based alkalinization projects. The goal of the project is to create the first fully connected global model to focus on global alkalinization. The modeling efforts will center on improving models in a number of “domains”, including soils, streams and rivers, the near coast, and the open ocean that our collective group has been working on independently. By working together to fuse these modeling efforts we will be able to link key cross-domain boundary fluxes and answer cross-domain questions that currently cannot be approached. We will also use higher resolution models within the soil and ocean domains to evaluate how coarse global models perform. This new integrated inorganic carbon model will help us to understand the ecosystem effects of ERW and OAE deployment. In addition to modeling, our researchers are also working on the ground to deploy enhanced weathering field trials on agricultural soils to study the carbon and crop benefits, test monitoring methods, and widen adoption of these cutting edge climate solutions. This work is paired with a suite of outreach and education programs for youths, higher education students, and agricultural practitioners. For more information on the project, please visit: https://mayaalmaraz6.wixsite.com/goala/about The Fellowship We seek to hire 2 to 3 Environmental Fellows for an internship over the summer of 2025. For fellows who need to build their computational skillset, we offer attendance at an 8-week online machine learning course from March to June of 2025 that concludes with an in-person workshop in Italy! Fellows will then complete the 12-week internship, either at Yale University or remotely, where they will contribute to GOAL-A research modeling the effects of enhanced rock weathering and ocean alkalinity enhancement on the Mississippi River watershed and Gulf of Mexico. The course: Should you choose to take the course, students will be introduced to an array of powerful open-source geocomputation tools and machine learning methodologies under the Linux environment. Students who have never been exposed to programming under Linux will reach a level where they feel confident in using advanced open source data processing routines. Those with a programming background will find the course beneficial in enhancing their skills for modeling and coding. Our aim is to equip attendees with powerful tools and endow them with the ability to continue independent development. The skills acquired on this course will be beneficial, not only for GIS applications but for general data processing and applied statistical computing in a number of fields. These skills lay the foundation for career development as a geographic data scientist. Course participants (and fellows) should have basic computer skills and a strong desire to learn command line tools to process data. A basic knowledge of python is requested and can be achieved before the course by following a self-taught online course (e.g. https://geo-python-site.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ followed by https://autogis-site.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). Additionally, we expect participants to have a specific interest in geographical data analyses, prior experience in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and basic statistical knowledge will be helpful. Basic concepts of GIS, such as what is a raster/vector, overlays, buffering, etc., and basic concepts of statistics, such as mean standard, deviation, residuals will be assumed as given. For more information on the course, please visit: https://spatial-ecology.net/course-geocomputation-machine-learning-for-environmental-applications-intermediate-level-2023/ The internship: Fellows will use their computational skills to develop a project that contributes to the development of an integrated inorganic carbon model and/or understanding the effects of natural climate solutions on ecosystem alkalinity. Modeling projects will likely include data collection, cleaning, wrangling, and model development such as data incorporation, model training, validation, and sensitivity analyses. Fellow projects will focus on aspects of the project such as biogeochemistry or hydrology. For example, projects may look like tracing the source of rainfall and climate impacts on enhanced weathering, collecting lime data and mapping lime applications over time, looking at the impacts of enhanced weathering on nitrogen cycling, or understanding how changes in river alkalinity impact coastal blue carbon. We offer a competitive base stipend of $15,000 plus $1,500 - $2,500 in supplementary support for travel, housing, and potential internship needs for your 12-week summer internship. We will also fully support course costs as well as air travel and accommodations for the in-person workshop in Italy. Fellowships can be remote or at Yale University, and the program will support relocation costs for those who choose to spend the summer in New Haven. Fellows will be hosted by Peter Raymond who is a Professor of Biogeochemistry within the Yale School of the Environment. In addition to research, fellows will also take part in weekly skill and professional development workshops. For more information on Pete, please visit: https://environment.yale.edu/directory/faculty/peter-raymond For more information on the internship, please visit: https://environmentalfellows.yale.edu/program-overview/highlights For full consideration, please submit your application at https://environmentalfellows.yale.edu/apply by December 8, 2024. Applications received after that date will be considered only if the positions remain unfilled. The application window will close January 7, 2025. To unsubscribe from this list please go to https://community.esa.org/confirm/?u=RhPWqPxFwODKvbkiT32nkIqRrsiSgulp
