Addressing Global Hunger & Poverty through Agricultural Development
Dr. Rajiv Shah, director of Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, delivers an overview of the Foundation’s programs that addressing global poverty and hunger, and a panel of experts from the College of Natural Resources responds by discussing the challenges and opportunities to improving the lives of smallholder farmers and their families through philanthropy, technology, and policy. With questions from the audience.
Kimberly Johnson honored for Excellence in Management
Kimberly Johnson, assistant dean of Instruction & Student Affairs, was recently received honored with the 2008 Excellence in Management Award by the Berkeley Staff Assembly.
New Bay Area Desalination Plant May Make It Savory to Sip Seawater
Dave Sunding, professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics, was recently featured on KTVU news discussing the proposed plant.
Link to the clip:
http://www.ktvu.com/video/15985864/
Russell Rustici, Civil Engineering '48
The 2008 CNR Citation
The College of Natural Resources Citation is CNR's highest award, honoring individuals, couples, groups or organizations such as donors, volunteers, alumni, advisory board members, or friends of the College who have made extraordinary contributions to the CNR community.
Recipients are honored for their extraordinary commitment of time, sharing their expertise, advocacy and outreach, and/or private support to the College, its students, and its programs. The Citation recognizes those who have made a significant impact and have demonstrated an exceptional commitment the mission of the College.
Professor Carolyn Merchant
Career Achievement Award
Professor Sofia Villas-Boas
Young Faculty/CE Specialist Award
Dr. Maggi Kelly, geospatial imaging expert, honored for 'excellence in education'
Maggi Kelly, director of CNR's Geospatial Imaging & Informatics Facility, associate cooperative extension specialist, and adjunct associate professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, recently earned the "Excellence in Education" award from the California Geographic Information Association.
The award honors programs with an extraordinary approach, contribution, development or commitment to GIS education in California. Nominees are judged on the basis of the breadth of courses offered, accessibility of classes, population served, technical facilities, and post-graduation support.
Kelly's research and outreach program has several themes and is informed by the disciplines of GIS science, geography, and landscape ecology. She links ecological patterns with process in spatially heterogeneous and dynamic landscapes -- providing data and expertise needed to understand current and projected drivers of landscape change in California. Her approach also embraces the evaluation of new technologies and development of best practices for ecological monitoring and landscape quantification. She is particularly interested in integrating high spatial resolution remotely sensed imagery and output from new active sensors with innovative image processing and spatial modeling techniques.
Many of Kelly's workshops combine instructor led classes with Internet-based workbooks. Both introductory and advanced classes are available.
For more information about webGIS, visit the GIIF website.
CNR Environmental Science Major Awarded Fulbright Scholarship
Senior Environmental Science major Daniel Song was watching the second round of the NCAA basketball tournament when he found the thick manila envelope addressed to him from the Fulbright Foundation.
“My heart skipped a beat,” he said. “I think it suffices to say I was ecstatic.”
Song, whose research has previously taken him to the Gump Station on Moorea, Cyprus, Turkey, and Washington D.C., will be spending a year as a Fulbright Scholar studying plants and bees on a Greek Island. The project is an extension of work he did last summer on the relationship between pollinators and a pesky species called the Yellow Star Thistle that has invaded California.
“Essentially I’ll be sitting outside in a thicket of thorny Yellow Star Thistle observing beetles, flies, bumble bees, solitary bees, and honeybees take sweet nectar from the flowers,” he said.
Want to play golf like Tiger Woods? The trick may be to play against him. A study conducted by Agriculture and Natural Resources Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Brown has shown that golfers may actually play better when pitted against a superstar like Woods. Brown analyzed over twenty thousand golf matches and factored in weather and course conditions to determine that golfers played an average of one stroke better when facing off against Woods.
Maggi Kelly, director of CNR's