UMaine Climate Change Institute announces 2023 Harold W. Borns Jr. Symposium award winners
The University of Maine Climate Change Institute has announced the graduate students who won awards for their research presentations during the 2023 Harold W. Borns Jr. Symposium.
Ph.D. student Alessandro Mereghetti won first place for best overall talk for his presentation titled “Reconstructing Extinct Herbivore Community Structure Through High-Resolution Coprolite Analysis: An Insight into the Mammoth Steppe’s Coproecology.” Ph.D. student Ingalise Kindstedt won second place, followed by Ph.D. student Bailey McLaughlin in third.
Ph.D. student Andrea J. Tirrell won the Dan & Betty Churchill Exploration Award, which recognizes the best presentation by a recipient of the Dan & Betty Churchill Exploration grant, for the talk “A Sky Island Perspective: New England Alpine Plant Distributions Across the Region.” Ph.D. student Elizabeth Leclerc received the Robert and Judith Sturgis Family Foundation Exploration Award, given to the best presentation by a recipient of the Robert and Judith Sturgis Family Foundation Exploration grant, for the talk “Investigating the Influence of Spanish Colonization on Climate Adaptation and Community Resilience on Peru’s North Coast.”
Also recognized during the event was Ph.D. student Madelyn Woods, who won the CCI Student Service Award. The honor recognizes a student for significant service to the climate change profession, the community, the institute and/or the university.
This year’s symposium was the 30th held by the Climate Change Institute. The annual event, named in honor of institute founder and professor emeritus Harold “Hal” Borns Jr., features presentations and discussion by graduate students and faculty on emerging research and topics related to global environmental change.