Gabrielle Wong-Parodi receives early career award
The assistant professor of Earth system science has received an early career faculty award to research the physical and mental health consequences of environmental coastal threats in the Gulf of Mexico.
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an assistant professor of Earth system science, has received an early career faculty award from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a research program sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The award will fund research to understand the physical and mental health consequences of environmental coastal threats in the Gulf of Mexico. Wong-Parodi, who is also a fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, uses behavioral decision science approaches to inform decision making, with a focus on building resilience and promoting sustainability in the face of a changing climate.
The project “aims to improve understanding of environmental, community, and individual attributes and systems that influence resilience in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Southeastern Atlantic coasts” and “brings together social and physical science researchers to characterize and better understand the role that environmental change plays on human responses along the coast,” she wrote in her proposal.
Wong-Parodi will be conducting a multi-year study of 3,400 residents in Florida and Texas. The research fits into a longer-term objective to understand how human responses – such as adaptation, migration and health ailments – inform environmental risk assessments, risk communications, disaster preparedness and coastal planning. The award also funds Wong-Parodi’s graduate student, Nina Berlin, to conduct research for the project.
The Early Career Faculty Innovator Program is a new funding opportunity for early career faculty in the social sciences and STEM outside of NCAR’s core expertise to co-develop interdisciplinary research projects in partnership with scientists and engineers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The Innovators Program aims to fund nine faculty and one graduate student of each faculty participant for two years, starting in summer 2019. Research themes that align with NSF and NCAR strategic priorities are selected for each two-year cohort, according to NCAR’s website.
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