Students journey the world, sail the seas in HMEI summer season internships

From Alaska to the Philippines, Princeton college students engaged in cutting-edge analysis for the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) over the summer season. Their work was a part of the Environmental Internship Program and included researching excessive climate, water and the atmosphere, biodiversity and conservation, oceans and ambiance, environmental coverage, and a brand new vitality future.

Students offered their summer season work on the HMEI Summer of Learning Symposium on Friday, Sept. 12.

“It’s all real research,” Gabe Vecchi, Director of HMEI, informed The Daily Princetonian. “We’re able to take some chances and explore new directions with some really high-skilled students.”

One group of HMEI interns traveled on a ship to the mid-Atlantic to pattern seawater. Darren McKeogh ’28, who served within the U.S. Navy for 4 years earlier than attending Princeton, sampled seawater to check a bacterial gene that converts nitrous oxide to nitrogen gasoline. 

“I was able to develop a lot of laboratory skills and research experience, which freshmen typically are not able to get on their first summer,” McKeogh stated.

Jessica Curran ’28 researched seaweed and its position in local weather mitigation and carbon sequestration within the Philippines and Taiwan. In the Philippines, Curran visited a seaweed farm, the place her group took samples of seaweed to measure the way it affected the ocean’s biochemical processes. The internship was “absolutely perfect” for Curran, who studied seaweed in highschool however had little journey expertise. 

McKenna Crocker ’28 spent the primary ten weeks of her summer season on the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), researching plant-pathogen relationships and the way they modified at varied altitudes. After her internship concluded, she used HMEI funding to journey to Kenya with Engineers Without Borders and constructed a water tank.

While Crocker didn’t have a background in biology earlier than the internship, the expertise she now needs to deal with is agricultural analysis. Her time in Kenya additionally helped her understand the significance of initiatives “helping people and giving back to communities.”

Some members remained on campus. Julianne Somar ’26, an structure main, researched how wooden bends itself and how you can implement these findings when creating biodegradable constructions. 

Somar and her friends made a prototype of a totally biodegradable wood construction now residing within the Forbes Garden. 

“As an architecture student, I don’t often have the chance to design something and then have it fully realized. So this was a really wonderful opportunity to get to do that,” Somar stated. 

Collin Guedel ’26 researched how microbes in soil management world hydrogen budgets. He shared with the ‘Prince’ that he believes there will probably be an rising quantity of hydrogen below the present hydrogen-based gas economic system. 

Students aren’t the one ones benefiting from this system. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering professor Michelle DiBenedetto stated her HMEI interns designed a brand new lab setup and labored on a robotic plastics collector.

“[This program] allows us as a research community to dream big,” Samuel Eastman, a postdoc within the Chemical and Biological Engineering division who has supervised a number of HMEI interns over time, stated. “I also like having them in the lab because of their fresh perspectives, and I like their enthusiasm.”

Many program members cited the expertise as probably influential for his or her future unbiased work. Guedel, as an illustration, plans to proceed his soil analysis for his thesis. 

The program gives fascinating, probably transformative experiences for any pupil, internship members shared. Somar stated, “Summers on campus aren’t as bad as they seem.” 

Suthi Navaratnam-Tomayko is the accessibility director and a Features contributor for the ‘Prince.’

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