The five inaugural sustainability fellows began their two-year appointment on a myriad of environmental based topics.
Anna Vinton attributes a large part of her love of nature to growing up on a Western Nebraska cattle ranch. Now, she’s left the farmland for the lab.
Vinton is part of the inaugural cohort of the Presidential Sustainability Solutions Fellowship. She is currently developing mathematical tools to research how coral reef species can survive environmental change.
The postdoctoral experience falls under USC’s sustainable framework “Assignment: Earth.’’ The intention of the fellowship is for early-career scholars to investigate sustainable challenges through interdisciplinary research.
“With sustainability, no matter what discipline you’re coming from, no matter what research background you have, I think it has ultimately the same amount of goals,” said fellow David Bañuelas. He is investigating models to predict the sea level rise and the effect it will have on Southern California. His research explores ways to protect salt marshes because of their importance to the planet.