SEAS hosts a Sustainability Clinic in Detroit, described in several news articles from 2021 including this press release on the SEAS website, written by Denise Spranger. From that press release: “Its goal: improve the ability of the City of Detroit and nonprofits serving the City to address the impacts of climate change on the natural and…
MIDAS, the Michigan Institute for Data Science, is a University of Michigan (U-M)-wide institute with 420 affiliated faculty from 60 departments. Each year MIDAS awards a series of pilot-study grants for research in data science and artificial intelligence, known as PODS grants (Propelling Original Data Science). This year, four researchers in SEAS received three of…
Bill Currie created the SEAS Deans Junior Faculty Mentoring Program in 2019 and continues to lead the program. This is a brief description of some aspects of the program, in part so that folks in other departments and universities can benefit from what we’ve learned. First, each pre-tenure, tenure-track faculty member is assigned a multi-mentor…
Ye Yuan recently completed her Master’s thesis research titled “Global warming potential driven by nitrogen inflow and hydroperiod in a model of Great Lakes coastal wetlands.” Ms. Yuan worked together with Bill Currie and the rest of the Mondrian model development team to add wetland GHG emissions to the model, including nitrous oxide (N2O), methane…
NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry (OCEAN) has awarded $750,000 to a multi-institution project to study the vulnerability of the Lake Huron ecosystem to global change. Dr. Bill Currie, a professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, is co-principal investigator of the research project, along with Jason…
Sarah Kiger has completed her PhD dissertation on modeling carbon cycling and ecosystem services in the exurban residential landscape. The abstract from her dissertation follows: “Ecosystem services (ES) are the physical goods and associated benefits that are provided to humans by the ecosystems of the planet. Assessment of ES requires knowledge of ecology and ecosystem…
Bill Currie teaches the course “Sustainability Issues in the Great Lakes Region” (Environ 305) as part of the undergraduate Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan. This course was one of ten finalists for the Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize in 2020. This course uses a case-study approach. Students learn to examine complexities, tradeoffs,…
Bill Currie was elected in 2019 as an AAAS Fellow. AAAS Fellows are elected by their peers for their “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.” Currie was elected for “advancing society’s understanding of ecosystem function through advanced modeling, particularly nutrient cycling and carbon balance in forests and wetlands and their…
Bill Currie, together with collaborators Dr. Laura Bourgeau-Chavez and Charlotte Weinstein at Michigan Tech Research Institute and Dr. Sherry Martin at Michigan State University, co-organized this NASA-funded workshop. Held in Ann Arbor, the workshop drew 25 participants from Minnesota to New York, including those from The Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Nature Conservancy, and…