SENEDIA hosted an outstanding Tech Talk on 14 February providing insights into the development efforts of the integrated Narragansett Bay Observatory and the Rhode Island Data Discovery Center. Rhode Island Consortium for Coastal Ecology Assessment, Innovation, and Modeling (RI C-AIM) is establishing a research framework to test and promote new sensing technologies, data collection capabilities, and ecosystem models, foundations upon which new partnerships with industry and communities in Rhode Island and beyond can be formed. The event provided networking and collaboration discussions between industry and the C-AIM educational organizations.
Funded by the National Science Foundation’s EPSCoR, program, RI CAIM is a collaboration of engineers, scientists and designers from eight RI higher education institutions developing new approaches to assess, predict and respond to the effects of climate variability on coastal ecosystems. These efforts could have applicability to other undersea technology/defense applications.
Presenters included:
Dr. Geoffrey Bothun, Principal Investigator of RI C-AIM, is a professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rhode Island. His research focuses on the creation of new nanomaterials for therapeutic application and environmental sensing, and improved understanding of the environmental health and safety effects of emerging pollutants.
Dr. Jason Dwyer, a research lead for RI C-AIM, is an associate professor of Chemistry at the University of Rhode Island. His research centers on the fabrication of novel, reliable and low-cost nanosensor devices that have application in both marine and medical sciences.
Dr. Bethany Jenkins, a research lead for RI C-AIM, is an associate professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Rhode Island. Her research focuses on understanding the metabolism of nutrients in marine microrganisms, particularly diatoms. Dr. Jenkins also conducts research on food web dynamics in the world’s oceans.
Dr. Baylor Fox-Kemper, a research lead for RI C-AIM, is an associate professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. His research focuses on understanding ocean dynamics and developing models at both global and local scales that can more effectively describe the complex systems driving climate variability.
