School of Earth and Space Exploration New Discoveries Lecture Series
New Discoveries Lecture Series: Earth Innovation: Collaborative Science and Engineering for Exploring Desert Ecosystems
Desert ecosystems are vital to life on Earth, and yet these systems remain poorly understood. Join us for the Earth Day edition of the New Discoveries Lecture Series to learn how interdisciplinary research merging engineering and ecosystem science is being used to explore critical questions about the future of desert ecosystems on our changing Earth.
Date and time:
Thursday, April 22
7 p.m. Pacific, Arizona
Run time: 1 hour
Presenting: Associate Professor Heather Throop and Assistant Research Professor Jnaneshwar Das.
Associate Professor Heather Throop | Photo credit: Alex Derr
Heather Throop is an ecosystem scientist who studies carbon cycling and climate change in desert ecosystems. She received a PhD from Stony Brook University and was a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow. Throop was on the faculty at New Mexico State University and Beloit College and was a 2015 Fulbright fellow in Namibia. She maintains a collaborative research program with students and faculty in Namibia. Throop moved to ASU in 2015, where she is jointly appointed in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Life Sciences.
Assistant Research Professor Jnaneshwar Das | Photo credit: Andy DeLisle/ASU
Jnaneshwar Das' research explores a variety of environmental robotics solutions to enable data collection at agricultural farms, forests, and coral reefs alike, at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. Das’ Distributed Robotic Exploration and Mapping Systems Laboratory (DREAMS) has advanced new methodologies for sampling, modeling and prediction that considers both in-situ and ex-situ labeling of samples. Das is a Assistant Research Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science.