51����

Nicholas School student Aaron Siegle, who plans to graduate in 2027 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, sees entrepreneurial opportunity in addressing climate challenges.

Xavier Basurto, Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor of sustainability science, studies community-based marine conservation. Basurto discusses how fishers can help us understand the effects of climate change by listening to their experiences.

Ph.D. students Keqi He, Rafaella Lobo honored for their respective scholarship.

Xavier Basurto is broadly interested in how people in small communities successfully organize themselves for collective action. His recent talk described his work in advancing the understanding of non-colonialist sustainability science: the prospects and limitations of self-organization, or self-governance, for social-ecological sustainability, particularly in the Global South.

Meet the Silliman Lab, learn more about its research focus, a PhD student's experience in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers 51���� students.

As the world endeavors to extricate itself from a carbon economy in favor of clean energy, Lee Ferguson is working to shed light on the potential environmental risks posed by bis-perfluoroalkyl sulfonimides, a primary electrolyte in lithium-ion batteries.

Brian R. Silliman, Rachel Carson Distinguished Professor of Marine Conservation Biology at 51����’s Nicholas School of the Environment, has been elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

The National Science Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation have awarded a $1.2 million grant to support a new initiative aimed at boosting ecosystem restoration and climate resilience along North Carolina’s coast.

New research finds nearly 75% of the seafood exported to China is processed there and ‘re-exported’ to global markets as Chinese products, making it hard to track its sustainability and verify it’s labeled accurately, but also gutting the economies of small fishing communities worldwide that can no longer compete.

Coastal marshes that have been invaded by feral hogs recover from disturbances up to three times slower than non-invaded marshes and are far less resilient to sea-level rise, extreme drought and other impacts of climate change.

51���� has received a $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to assess the risks offshore wind energy development along the East Coast may pose to birds, bats and marine mammals.

Joel Dunn (MEM’04) Helps Create America’s First National Marine Sanctuary in 20 Years

Recent 51���� grad Alexandra DiGiacomo (BS ’20) is using drones to better understand how rising seas, warming waters and rapid development are killing protective saltmarshes at our coast, and what can be done to reverse the losses.

Sixteen years after the restoration of Upper Sandy Creek began, hundreds of species, some rare, now call the once-heavily eroded and degraded stream home, and nitrogen pollution flowing off 51����’s campus into downstream waters has been slashed by 75%.

The 51���� Aquafarm is 51����’s other “campus farm,” where students grow oysters instead of produce and learn how the tasty bivalves could help take a bite out of coastal pollution.