UIC Ph.D. student selected for Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship

Cynthia Garcia-Eidell, a Ph.D. student in earth and environmental sciences, received a 2022 John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship from the National Sea Grant College program and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

She is part of the 43rd class of the prestigious fellowship program that has trained more than 1,500 graduate students to become leaders in science, policy and public administration since 1979.

The fellowship offers early career professionals in marine and coastal science hands-on experiences transferring science to policy and management through one-year appointments with federal government offices in Washington, D.C. Fellows are chosen through a competitive process that includes comprehensive review at both the state Sea Grant program and national levels.

This fall, she will join 73 other Knauss fellows in a virtual placement week to get to know each other and interview with potential host offices. Following placement, she will begin her fellowship in February 2022.

Garcia-Eidell, whose research aims to understand carbon cycle changes along the coastal margins of our planet, is an ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational and Data Science Fellow and a member of the Atmosphere, Climate, and Ecosystems lab group at UIC, which is led by Max Berkelhammer, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences.

“We use satellite-derived datasets to help improve our understanding of the roles of the ocean, land and atmosphere interactions on such changes. By understanding large-scale ‘coastal couplings’ and their mechanistic links, we can help assess how the land and ocean carbon sinks may act in tandem with one another to mitigate the buildup of anthropogenic carbon dioxide,” she said. “I am looking forward to learning from the experts and being an active contributor to evidence-based policymaking through this experience.”