Congratulations to Lily Zhao on being awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowship. Zhao was the awardee for ‘Human Dimensions of Coral Reefs’. The fellowship will allow Zhao to continue her doctorate studies and research on how coral reefs and the coastal communities that depend on them can best recover from severe environmental shocks.
In all, the NSF named 2,000 individuals as this year’s recipients of awards from its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). 

SMEA Professor Eddie Allison was recently interviewed for an article featured on Oceans Deeply to discuss his research that shows in some developing countries, fish farming is not benefiting nutritionally vulnerable communities. These findings have some researchers and the aquaculture industry pushing back. However, it has also helped to develop a healthy debate. Ben Belton, an assistant professor of international development at Michigan State University, initially had questions regarding Professor Allison’s research, but is now working with him on a paper that Allison “thinks will address some of the contentions and look at the future of aquaculture. 

Alumna Natalie Lowell graduated from the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs in 2015 and is now a PhD student in the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. We had a chance to catch up with Natalie recently and hear about what she’s studying, her time at SMEA, and advice she has for current SMEA students. 

SMEA Professor and Associate Director Nives Dolšak, UW Director of the Center for Environmental Politics Aseem Prakash and faculty member at the School of Law, Environment and Planning at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in India Shalini Iyengar, recently wrote a piece featured in The Regulatory Review, a publication of the Penn Program on Regulation titled “Should India’s Supreme Court Enforce Regulations?” The article questions the Supreme Court of India’s involvement in enforcing public interest regulations, and whether sustained interventions could affect its ability to interpret the law as an expert, legitimate, and neutral actor. 

Congratulations to SMEA alum Chris Hart, whose SMEA Master’s thesis “Will the California Current lose its nesting Tufted Puffins?” was recently published in PeerJ. Hart worked in collaboration with Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife to ask about the population trends of an iconic species that’s under consideration for the Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing, the Tufted Puffin. Hart’s work could influence the U.S. 

Why did you decide to pursue a Master of Marine Affairs?
I wanted to remain immersed in ocean science while learning how to navigate the interface between science and policy.
Why did you decide to come to UW’s SMEA for graduate school?
It felt like a good fit for my goals. My undergraduate oceanography degree is from UW so I had a good sense of everything the university has to offer. 

Log into Twitter on a Sunday and search for #SundayFishSketch; you’ll find a plethora of illustrations of fishes and other marine species. These illustrations are submitted by scientists, artists and anyone else inspired to create, from all over the world. One of these contributors is 1st year School of Marine & Environmental Affairs (SMEA) graduate student Spencer Showalter. Showalter said “My sophomore year [at Boston University], I traveled to Belize for a research class, and part of the assignment was to keep a field journal and draw a ridiculous number of fishes. 

2017 SMEA graduate, Tim Lee, whose SMEA thesis entitled, “Quantifying the effectiveness of shoreline armoring removal on coastal biota of Puget Sound“, was recently published in PeerJ. Lee did a meta-analysis of data from School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) research scientists Jason Toft and Jeff Cordell to show that removing shoreline armoring in Puget Sound is an effective restoration technique. 

SMEA Professor and Associate Director Nives Dolšak, UW Director of the Center for Environmental Politics Aseem Prakash and Political Science Ph.D. student Sirindah (Christianna) Parr recently wrote a piece featured in The Washington Post Monkey Cage on the Oxfam scandal titled “The Oxfam scandal shows that, yes, nonprofits can behave badly. So why aren’t they overseen like for-profits?” The civic sector plays an important role in the contemporary society. 

SMEA Professor and Associate Director Nives Dolšak and UW Director of the Center for Environmental Politics Aseem Prakash recently wrote an article featured on the The Hill titled “The key to a successful carbon tax is how you spend the money.” To examine the politics of carbon tax, Dolšak and Prakash compared three carbon tax proposals, all from Washington state: the 2018 carbon tax proposed by Governor Jay Inslee, a counter proposal by Washington Land Commissioner Hilary Franz, and I-732.