The Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research (CCR) held its 10th annual Reid Bryson Scholarship competition on February 13, 2020. There were 18 student applicants from a diverse set of departments and institutes across campus, including the Nelson Institute, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Space Science and Engineering Center, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Integrative Biology, Forest and Wildlife Ecology, Geography, Chemistry, Botany, UW Biocore, Department of Medicine and Public Health, and Agricultural and Applied Economics. This rich variety captures the interdisciplinary nature of Professor Reid Bryson’s studies and will inspire other UW students.
The winners of the 2020 Reid Bryson Scholarship are Guo Yu for the $1000 first place award and Nicholas Spoerk, David Fastovich, and Alyson Douglas for individual $500 runner up awards.
Guo Yu, a graduate student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, presented a poster on “The upper tail of precipitation in convection-permitting regional climate models and their utility in nonstationary flood frequency analysis.”
Nicholas Spoerk, a graduate student in the Department of Medicine and Public Health, presented a poster on “Qualifying climate-related epidemiology of diarrheal disease in Cape Town, South Africa.”
David Fastovich, a graduate student in the Department of Geography, presented a poster on “Patterns and possible mechanisms of Younger Dryas temperature trends in eastern North America.”
Alyson Douglas, a graduate student in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, presented a poster on “Using machine learning to estimate pre-anthropocene cloud and precipitation properties.”
In addition to these winning posters, the scholarship competition attracted an interesting and diverse range of research topics from across the UW campus, including:
- Monarch butterfly ecology
- Forest management impacts
- Diversity benefits of mangrove islands
- Arctic solar energy trends
Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we will be awarding more Reid Bryson Scholarships in 2021 to worthy University of Wisconsin-Madison students.