Earth & Environmental Sciences
Dr Wade H Elmer – Improving Plant Disease Resistance: Can Nanoparticles Deliver?
Crop disease can have an enormous impact on farming productivity and profits. A plant’s resistance to disease has been previously linked to micronutrients, which control key biochemical processes. Dr Wade Elmer of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station has...
The Galapagos Conservation Trust
Galapagos Conservation Trust (GCT) is the only UK registered charity to focus exclusively on the conservation and sustainability of the Galapagos Archipelago. Launched in 1995 at the Royal Society, GCT has supported a vast array of projects in Galapagos...
Dr. Deanna L. Wilkinson – Growing Opportunity in the Inner City
Dr. Deanna Wilkinson founded the Urban GEMS – Gardening Entrepreneurs Motivating Sustainability – to give disadvantaged adolescents an alternative to violence and an opportunity to explore new skills and opportunities while contributing to the health of their...
Dr Albert A. Presto – Taking a Hard Look at Air Pollution so We Can All Breathe Easier
Research engineer Dr Albert Presto and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies use modern chemical analysis and computer modelling methods to try and understand pollution from our modern technology. Oh, For a Breath of...
Dr Scott Carver – Conservation, Connections of Humans and Nature, and Unravelling a World of Infectious Diseases
Dr Scott Carver and his team at the University of Tasmania use a multidisciplinary approach to study the spread of disease within and among wild animals, their domestic counterparts, and humans. ‘No man is an island,’ says the poem, ‘entire of himself.’ It was...
Dr Neelke Doorn – A Fair Approach To Flooding
The number of floods has increased significantly over the past decade, with catastrophic consequences, both in terms of loss of human lives and damage to the environment. As on-going climate change is likely to increase the risk of flooding further, managing risks in...
Dr Leonard Bryan Coop – Cloudy, With A Chance Of Insects
The Integrated Plant Protection Center at Oregon State University is both a hub for research into agricultural pest management and the host of widelyused pest forecasting tools. Dr Leonard Coop and his co-workers plan to improve those tools even further. Should I...
Dr Jian Du-Caines – Protecting the Earth by Predicting Space Weather
Atmospheric physicist Dr Jian Du-Caines at the University of Louisville and her colleagues explore the interactions between Earth’s atmosphere and near Earth space to better predict space weather that can adversely affect life on Earth. Everyone Talks About the...
Professor William Lau – More Water, More Fire? The Surprising Link Between Increasing Global Humidity and Severe Wildfires
Increasing global temperatures have led to a worldwide increase in atmospheric water vapour. Paradoxically, this is correlated with an increase in the severity of wildfires and droughts. Research by Professor William Lau and his colleagues at the Earth System Science...
Trees for Cities: Boosting Public Health
Trees for Cities – Scientia’s charity partner – has been working on an international scale to create greener cities, engaging over 70,000 people to plant almost 700,000 trees to date. Here, we have had the pleasure of speaking with Kate Sheldon, Development Director...
Dr Taka’aki Taira – Taking the Earth’s Pulse – Listening to Seismic Noise
Research Seismologist Dr Taka’aki Taira at the University of California at Berkeley and his colleagues investigate changes in Earth’s structures related to earthquake rupture and volcanic eruption by exploring ways to listen to and interpret ambient seismic noise....
Dr John J. Perona – Sulphur Metabolism on the Anaerobic Earth
Life on Earth arose over three billion years ago, in an environment lacking significant quantities of molecular oxygen. As a consequence, the earliest living cells had to rely on distinctive chemical processes that persist today only in extreme conditions where oxygen...
Dr Iris Möller – Using Nature to Protect Us From… Nature
Environmental geographer Dr Iris Möller and her colleagues at Cambridge University’s Coastal Research Unit look for ways to protect our coastal areas from flooding by studying the natural protections provided by the coastal geography itself. Water, Water...
Dr Irina S. Druzhinina – Using Mother Nature to Help Clean Up Mother Nature
Mycologist and Environmental Engineer Dr Irina Druzhinina and her colleagues at the Biochemical Technology Research Division of the Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Biological Engineering, TU Wien in Vienna, Austria, are looking for a compound to use in the...
Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Honor Society
Founded in 1886 at Cornell University, Sigma Xi is an international community of scientists and engineers dedicated to promoting excellence in research, enhancing public engagement with science, and fostering the next generation of researchers. Here, we have had the...
Dr Michael Notaro – Does Climate Affect The World’s Vegetation – Or Is It The Other Way Around?
Climate scientist, Dr Michael Notaro, and his colleagues at the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin–Madison, study climate variability and change, including how the weather, including monsoons, can be influenced by variations in...
Professor Reinhard Dallinger – Investigating Metals In The World’s Invertebrate Animals
Ecotoxicologist Professor Reinhard Dallinger and his colleagues at the University of Innsbruck in Austria look for ways to locate and measure environmental metal fluxes and pollution in non-model invertebrate and indicator organisms, like worms and shellfish. Looking...
Dr Ken L. Ferrier – Interpreting Ancient Shorelines
One way to understand Earth’s climate is to study past changes in sea level, which leave tell-tale signatures in the geological record. Scientists often look at ancient shorelines to infer how Earth’s oceans and ice sheets responded to previous climates. Geologist Dr...
Soapbox Science
Soapbox Science was founded as a public outreach platform for promoting women scientists and their research. Now in its seventh year, Soapbox Science takes female scientists out of the lab and onto the streets, to talk to the passing, unsuspecting public about...
The European Southern Observatory
The European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organisation that facilitates astronomy and astrophysics research. Since its creation in 1962, ESO has provided scientists with the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes in its host state of...
Kimberly Kowal Arcand – Somewhere, Outside The Rainbow
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory orbits high above the earth, beaming back images of the high-energy universe impossible to obtain from the ground. Bringing this data to the world is Kimberly Arcand, Visualisation Lead for the project. Here we go into detail on some...
Dr Merritt N. Deeter – Measuring How The Earth Exhales
Atmospheric Scientist Dr Merritt Deeter at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado and his colleagues work with satellite data from NASA to measure levels of carbon monoxide and other pollutants released into the atmosphere around the...
Dr David Eaton – Hydraulic Fracture Monitoring And Induced Microseismicity In Western Canada
Dr David Eaton is a geoscientist interested in the impact of human industrial activities on geological phenomena. His research has focused on better understanding geomechanical deformations and resulting microseismic events that are stimulated by hydraulic fracturing...
Dr Diliana D. Simeonova – Deciphering Unknown And Unrecognised Phosphorus-Microbial Transformations
Dr Diliana D. Simeonova and her colleagues at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Microbiology in Sofia, Bulgaria perform research at the interface between geochemistry and microbiology – or simply geomicrobiology. Dr Simeonova and her colleagues are...
Professor Stephen Goff – Contagious Cancer Cells In Shellfish
Professor Stephen Goff of Columbia University studies transmissible cancer in shellfish. His interest in viruses and their role in cancer led him to initially research a potential viral cause for leukaemia that is present in shellfish. The cancer did not have a viral...
Professor Yongkang Xue – Anthropogenic Contributions To The Sahel Mega-Droughts
Geography and climatology researcher Professor Yongkang Xue at the University of California, Los Angeles, has shown for the first time, in a series of studies using multi-model efforts, that the Sahel region 30-year long droughts are partly a result of human activity...
Dr Tony Lui – Investigating Plasma Storms And Substorms In Our Near-Earth Backyard
Space physicist Dr Tony Lui has spent four decades increasing our understanding of the mechanisms behind the magnetic disturbances and interactions of space plasma surrounding our home planet. Plasma, a ubiquitous state of matter In the calm and comfort of a...
Dark Is The New Black
Eighty-four percent of the matter in the universe is made of something we cannot see, cannot detect, can only guess at based on the gravitational shadows it leaves in the visible universe. Sounds crazy? Welcome to the world of dark matter, where teams of researchers...
Professor Urs Schaltegger – Using Radioisotopes In Volcanic Crystals To Measure The Age Of The Earth
Professor Urs Schaltegger, with his colleagues in the Isotope Geochemistry Group at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, analyse isotopes of Uranium and Lead found in crystals of the mineral zircon to determine the age of geologic deposits. They use this data to...
Professor Arthur Devries – Cold As Ice: Antifreeze Proteins In Polar Fishes
Professor Arthur DeVries of the University of Illinois is the discoverer of anti-freeze proteins in polar fishes, which enable them to survive and thrive in polar environments, where they would otherwise freeze to death. This unique adaptation forms a cornerstone of...
Dr Joyce Penner – The Ice Cloud And Climate Puzzle
Figuring out how the highest clouds in the sky behave means understanding how ice forms at high altitude. This is especially true when trying to quantify the impact of human activity on their formation and how it affects climate change. To improve our understanding,...
Professor Helmut Segner – Shrinking Fish Stocks: The Effect Of Environmental Sex Hormones On Immunity
The size of fish catches from rivers has reduced to alarming levels in many countries. Professor Helmut Segner of the University of Bern in Switzerland is studying the reasons why fish stocks might be dwindling. His research focusses primarily on the effect of sex...