December 12, 2019
A journey reveals that her voice matters. A trip changes his work motivation. The theme of disaster response frames both of these touching and inspiring science stories. Members of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative community, Samantha (Mandy) Joye and Simeon Pesch, joined scientists Jessica Moreman, Laura Guertin, and Paula Buchanan and shared their personal experiences at the 2019 American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Fall Meeting Story Collider event.
Senior Producers Ari Daniel Shapiro and Shane Hanlon hosted the December Story Collider show at the Tabletop Tap House in San Francisco. Helping to organize the event were Liesl Hotaling and Assistant Director Sherryl Gilbert with the Center for the Integrated Modeling and Analysis of the Gulf Ecosystem (C-IMAGE).
The packed room of 75 attendees thoroughly enjoyed the event and now you can, too! Listen to their stories though these recordings provided by the Story Collider online here.
Listen as engineer Simeon Pesch explains how the suffering he saw of people living in polluted conditions led him to conduct research about a different pollution event, the Deepwater Horizon. Simeon is a process engineer at the Hamburg University of Technology and a researcher with the C-IMAGE consortium.
Laura Guertin, Professor of Earth Science at Penn State Brandywine, describes the interactions with people who influenced her creative method of communicating coastal optimism for southern Louisiana.
Hear how Paula Buchanan, a doctoral student in emergency management, describes how her ties to New Orleans and watching Hurricane Katrina from a distance ignited her passion for water quality.
Listen as paleoclimatologist Jessica Moerman’s story illustrates how a fire far away from where she lives will affect her family for generations. Jessica is an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow.
From left to right: Story Collider senior producer Shane Hanlon, doctoral student Paula Buchanan, geologist Laura Guertin, engineer Simeon Pesch, climatologist Jessica Moerman, microbiologist Samantha (Mandy) Joye, and Story Collider senior producer Ari Daniel Shapiro at the 2019 Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco, CA. Photo by Lauren Lipuma, AGU. Used with permission from Story Collider.
You can also read about the Story Collider event held during the 2017 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystems Science conference: Story Collider Unites Community, Research, and Restoration.
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This article originally appeared online here and was written by Nilde Maggie Dannreuther. Contact maggied@ngi.msstate.edu with questions or comments.
This research was made possible in part by grants from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) to the Center for the Integrated Modeling and Analysis of Gulf Ecosystems III (C-IMAGE III) and the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf-2 (ECOGIG-2) consortium.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is a 10-year independent research program established to study the effect, and the potential associated impact, of hydrocarbon releases on the environment and public health, as well as to develop improved spill mitigation, oil detection, characterization and remediation technologies. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the GoMRI research. All research data, findings and publications will be made publicly available. The program was established through a $500 million financial commitment from BP. For more information, visit https://gulfresearchinitiative.org/.
© Copyright 2010- 2020 Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) – All Rights Reserved. Redistribution is encouraged with acknowledgement to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI). Please credit images and/or videos as done in each article. Questions? Contact web-content editor Nilde “Maggie” Dannreuther, Northern Gulf Institute, Mississippi State University (maggied@ngi.msstate.edu).
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