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INSTAAR has announced its Summer Scholars for 2024: Natalie Aranda and Jed Lenetsky. They will each be awarded a stipend for the summer months to continue their research projects.

On May 8th, we came together as a community to eat, present awards, and recognize our MS and PhD graduates. Many INSTAARs attended, along with the families of our graduates and award winners. Congratulations to all!

PhD student Millie Spencer is 1 of 5 Fulbright awardees from CU Boulder. She will use her award to expand her work with Mapuche-Pehuenche communities in Chile: mapping glaciers, gathering oral histories of glacier retreat and hydrological change, and illuminating water insecurity.

Incoming PhD student Katie Gannon (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) has garnered this year’s Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. She will investigate greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes, working with advisor Bella Oleksy.

Mountain tourism brings revenues to Nepal but leaves a mess behind. Local and international groups are offering new cleanup strategies. INSTAAR research scientist Alton Byers and his colleague Suzanne OConnell discuss the scope of the problem, pollution from the waste, and solutions for sustainable tourism.

As a student assistant in INSTAAR's front office, Joe has been a beacon: his creative problem-solving and hard work are matched only by his kindness and generosity of spirit. Turns out his degree program (Leeds School of Business) was equally impressed.

After a recent trip to Antarctica, Cassandra Brooks (ENVS/INSTAAR) did a Q&A with The Pew Charitable Trusts about Adélie and Emperor penguins and their need for protection. Topics included climate change threats, population declines, protected areas, and hope for the future.

For Earth Day, CBS interviewed James Balog, environmental photographer, founder of Earth Vision Institute, and INSTAAR Affiliate. Balog has become one of the foremost chroniclers of human-caused climate change, as his cameras have tracked the dramatic effects – vanishing ice, rising seas, fires, and the toll climate change is taking on all living things. As shown in the 6-minute video interview, ~1200 of his prints were recently acquired by the Library of Congress.

INSTAAR researcher Peyton Thomas has been awarded the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity from CU Boulder. A fish physiologist who studies the impacts of a changing climate on fish growth trajectories, Thomas is a postdoctoral scholar at INSTAAR and in the Environmental Studies program.

INSTAAR is pleased to announce that incoming PhD student Katie Gannon is this year’s recipient of the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. Gannon will work with advisor Bella Oleksy to explore murky questions around greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes.