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Weekly Newsletter |
February 16, 2021
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Dear colleagues-
This week, we provide a newsletter worth scrolling through as you avoid thinking about shoveling snow…
We have several events happening this week including the second lecture on Urban Transformations & Regional Resilience, happening on 2/17 at noon. And our second EJ movie, Return to the Andes, on Thursday, 2/18 at 6 pm. Prior to the film, be sure to tune in to the Nexus Institute's watch party for the Wilson Center's interview with Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti.
Did you know that February 2nd was World Wetlands Day? Perhaps more importantly, here in Indiana, the House of Representatives will soon have a hearing on SB 389, a bill that will strip protections for wetlands in the state. Learn more about the bill here, and learn more about the environmental services wetlands provide by tuning into our virtual forum next Wednesday, 2/24, led by the C4E Water Challenges SRA, which will bring together researchers from Purdue, IU, IUPUI, and Notre Dame. Also bringing in speakers and scholars from universities around the state and country is the Environmental Justice Symposium, taking place virtually on March 25 & 26.
And to close, read on for news regarding several C4E affiliates including Bernie Engel (ADR, AGRO), Bryan Pijanowski (FNR), Linda Lee (AGRO), and one of our newest affiliates, Mirian Velay-Lizancos (CIVIL). Kudos also to students of Jonathan Shannahan (HHS) and Ellen Wells (HHS) who have been recognized for their research projects. Finally, check out a new article featuring work in affiliate Haley Oliver’s (Food Science) Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety, citing new research by affiliates Jonathan Bauchet and Jacob Ricker-Gilbert. Congrats!
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| Upcoming Events |
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President Sagasti, elected by Peru’s Congress after deep political turmoil in late 2020, is the head of a transitional government that has the difficult task of leading the country under the dramatic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic recession, and a divisive political campaign that is expected to elect a new president on April 11 of this year.
This webinar is the third of the Wilson Center Latin American Program’s “Crisis Conversations,” a series of dialogues with Latin American leaders about overcoming policy challenges during this pandemic. Earlier events featured President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador and President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic.
More information/join the watch party |
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The Value of All Wetlands: Indiana Researchers Weigh In
Wednesday, February 24 | 3:00 - 4:20 PM
In this virtual forum sponsored by the Center for the Environment's Water Challenges Signature Research Area, researchers from several Indiana universities will share research on the value of isolated wetlands, which are vital to the health of Indiana’s ecology, water and people. These unique and important ecosystems are currently threatened by Senate Bill 389, which would repeal critical wetland protections in Indiana. Speakers will share short presentations about many ecosystem functions that isolated wetlands provide including: flood storage, wildlife habitat, water quality improvements, and carbon storage. Speakers include:
- Sara McMillan (Purdue) - Moderator & introduction to the legislation
- Chris Craft (Indiana University) - Importance of isolated wetlands on the landscape
- Jason Hoverman (Purdue) - Isolated wetlands as critical wildlife habitat
- Katherine O’Reilly (Notre Dame) - Water quality benefits provided by isolated wetlands
- Bob Barr (IUPUI) - Role of isolated wetlands in flood storage and groundwater regulation
- Cliff Johnston (Purdue) - Carbon storage in isolated wetlands
Click here to register to attend.
The event will be followed by a policy forum, “Wetland Protection in Indiana: The Way Forward," co-hosted by the Hoosier Environmental Council, the White River Alliance, and the Indiana Land Protection Alliance. More info to come. |
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Virtual Lecture Series: Urban Transformations & Regional Resilience
Wednesday, February 17 | 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Friday, February 19 | 8:30 - 10:00 AM
Center affiliates and Civil Engineering professors Suresh Rao and Satish Ukkusuri have organized a virtual lecture series on the effects of rapid urbanization titled "Urban Transformations and Regional Resilience”.
The next installment in the series features Dr. Rachel Davidson, Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a core faculty member in the Disaster Research Center, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Chief Diversity Advocate in the College of Engineering at the University of Delaware. Her talk will describe a computational framework that can be used to identify disaster risk management policy solutions based on behavior of the system as a whole. More info/link to register.
Then, on Friday, February 19, the third installment in the series will take place, featuring Janki Andharia, Professor and Dean, Tata Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Mumbai. Her lecture is titled "Urban Transormation: A Yearning, A Utopia?" More info/link to register. |
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Environmental Justice Film Series: Return to the Andes
Thursday, February 18 | 6:00 PM
Join us for the next installment in the 2020-2021 Environmental Justice Film Series, featuring the film Return to the Andes, a documentary about Nelida Silva who returns to her Peru birthplace with a dream of helping rural women start businesses. Following the film, there will be a post screening discussion with Silva and director Mitch Teplitski. Register here. |
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Chemical Exposures Signature Research Area - Open Meeting
Thursday, February 25 | 10:00 AM
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The C4E Chemical Exposures Signature Research Area will hold their first collaborative project meeting on Thursday Feb. 25 from 10-11am. The PFAS Project Collaboration between the Hoverman and Sepulveda research groups will be highlighted this month with presentations by postdoctoral researchers Drs. Wes Flynn and Ty Hoskins.
- Dr. Wes Flynn’s presentation is titled “Understanding the impact of PFAS on a wetland ecosystems”
- Dr. Ty Hoskins’ presentation is titled “Assessing bioaccumulation and toxicity of PFAS in amphibians to enable ecological risk assessment”
Click here for more information and a link to join the meeting. |
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2021 Symposium: Next Steps – Environmental Justice, Climate Change, and Racial Justice
March 25 & 26, 2021
The Center for the Environment is working with several organizations on campus and in conjunction with several other institutions of higher education in Indiana (Notre Dame, IUPUI, IU Bloomington) to organize a free two-day virtual, regional symposium entitled, “Next Steps – Environmental Justice, Climate Change, and Racial Justice,” on March 25-26, 2021. This effort is being led by professor of Anthropology and recent associate director of the Center for the Environment, Laura Zanotti. Zanotti received financial support from Purdue’s Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership as one of five grant recipients for project proposals enabling inclusion at Purdue. More information, including a schedule and speaker bios, here.
We invite all students to submit a relevant research poster related to conference themes to present at the Symposium March 25-26, 2021. This symposium focuses on intersections among racial justice, law, climate change, environmental policy, and the arts. You can learn more about how to submit a student poster for the conference here.
The deadline to submit posters and abstracts is Friday March 12, 2021. Please announce to students.
Registration is required to attend the Conference - register by clicking here. |
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Circular Economies Research Cluster - Monthly Meeting
Friday, February 26 | 9:00 AM
The C4E Circular Economies Research Cluster will hold their first monthly meeting of the semester on Friday, February 26 at 9:00 am. Any interested faculty who are not currently part of the Cluster and wish to be should email Robby Teas or Abby Engelberth for more information. |
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| Affiliates in the News |
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Legislation tackles toxic "forever chemicals" found in Indianapolis' drinking water
Indy Star | February 2021
Kelly Wilkinson, Indy Star
Concern over PFAS chemicals in drinking water is rising across the country as well as here in Indiana, and this article explores legislation that is currently on the table to address PFAS issues. The article features input from C4E affiliate Linda Lee, who also leads the Center's PFAS research team. Learn more about their work here, and stay up-to-date on the Center's legislative watch list here. Continue reading. |
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Tipping Point Planner Project Honored with College of Ag TEAM Award
Purdue FNR | January 2021
Purdue FNR
The Tipping Point Planner project, a joint effort by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and Purdue Extension, has been selected as a 2020 recipient of the Purdue College of Agriculture’s TEAM (Together Everyone Achieves More) Award. The Tipping Point Planner was created to assist community leaders throughout the Great Lakes Basin in making long-term management decisions that affect environmental health of local resources and a community’s quality of life, and features C4E affiliates Bryan Pijanowski and Bernie Engel. Read more. |
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How Safe are Groundnuts Produced in Senegal? Main Takeaways from a Pilot Project
AgriLinks | February 2021
AgriLinks
In a project funded by C4E affiliate Haley Oliver's Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety (FSIL), research by Center affiliates Jonathan Bauchet and Jacob Ricker-Gilbert, partnered with the Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles (ISRA), quantified chemical and microbial contamination levels in groundnuts that smallholder farmers in Senegal eat, sell and store for seed. Surveys of 250 smallholder farmers in the country's peanut basin, as well as testing for chemical and microbial pathogens in their stored groundnuts, provided four interesting results. Continue reading. |
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New mix could double concrete’s carbon uptake
Purdue University News | February 2021
Purdue University/John Underwood
A team lead by Mirian Velay-Lizancos, a new affiliate of the Center and an assistant professor of civil engineering at Purdue, has proposed a way to make concrete more sustainable. Their new recipe for concrete has the potential to cut carbon emissions dramatically, creating building blocks for a better world. Continue reading about the project here. |
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C4E Affiliates' Students Recognized
Purdue HHS | February 2021
Purdue HHS assistant and associate professors Jonathan Shannahan and Ellen Wells' students were recently recognized by Purdue Health Sciences News for their recent accomplishments.
Dr. Shannahan's student Saeed Alqahtani won the Arab Toxicologists Association Special Interest Group’s Graduate Student Best Publication Award for his article recently published in Frontiers in Immunology.
Dr. Wells' student was mentioned in President Daniels’ Annual Open Letter to the People of Purdue. This student’s observation is part of independent research project in Dr. Wells’ lab to compare the frequency of mask usage frequency in different conditions (including indoors).
Congratulations to both students and professors! Read more here. |
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Funding Opportunities & Webinars
COVID-19 Funding Opportunities – This list is
updated frequently.
NSF Understanding the Rules of Life: Emergent Networks (URoL:EN) ($3M over 5 years)
Successful projects of the URoL:EN program are expected to use convergent approaches that explore emergent network properties of living systems across various levels of organizational scale and, ultimately, contribute to understanding the rules of life through new theories and reliable predictions about the impact of specific environmental changes on behaviors of complex living systems, or engineerable interventions and technologies based on a rule of life to address associated outcomes for societal benefit. The convergent scope of URoL:EN projects also provides unique STEM education and outreach possibilities to train the next generation of scientists in a diversity of approaches and to engage society more generally. Deadline: May 10
NSF Center for Advancement and Synthesis of Open Environmental Data and Sciences Webinar
3:00PM to 4:00 PM on February 23
USDA-AFRI Fellowship Information Session
11:30AM to 12:30PM on February 18
PhD students and postdocs in agricultural-related research are encouraged to attend to learn about the USDA's predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships. The PhD fellowship offers $35,000 stipend for up to three years and the postdoctoral fellowship provides one to two years of postdoc salary. Please note: US Citizenship or permanent residency is required for the USDA AFRI fellowships.
Registration link
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