UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa — Penn State's 2024 U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Climate Science Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) ended on a successful note, with 16 students presenting posters on their summer research projects.

This REU is available to undergraduate students to pursue research in climate science, scientific inquiry and science communication and seeks to expose students to the full range of scientific exploration, from the generation of hypotheses to communicating research findings and their implications to other scientists and the general public.

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science has hosted this REU program since 2013. The REU brings students from across the country each summer to the University Park campus to engage in climate science research with Penn State faculty, post-doctoral scholars and graduate students. This year, participants came from 16 different universities and colleges across the United States, including from California, Georgia, Texas and New York.

The student participants and their posters are listed below.

1. Joshua Davis: “Examining the Effects of Exposure to Wildfire-Induced Particulate Matter and Ozone on Child Asthma Exacerbation”
2. Spencer Davis: “Contribution of Benthic Fauna to Carbon Cycling in the Chesapeake Bay”
3. Sam Hallett: “Experimental Constraints of Carbonate Minerals and Applications of the Avrami Equation”
4. Sierra Hill: “High-Resolution Model Accuracy During Extreme Heat Events on Neighborhood Scales: A Case Study in Baltimore, MD”
5. Tatum Hoffman: “What Can Observations Tell Us About the Future Trajectory of the North Atlantic Warming Hole?”
6. Kathryn Jagde: “Ice Nucleation Abilities of UV- and Ozone-Aged Microplastics”
7. Ethan Leclerc: “Environmental Risk on Social Media: Communicating Heat Wave Risk with Numerical and Non-Numerical Messaging”
8. Daniel Scharton: “Effects of Historical Wetlands on Crop Health in the Prairie Pothole Region”
9. Ally McGuire: “Exchange of Alkalinity between a Tidal Marsh and an Estuary”
10. Katie Meder: “The Effect of Management and Light Availability on the Establishment of Non-Timber Forest Products in Central Pennsylvania”
11. Andrew Muehr: “Revisiting the Dynamics Responsible for Storm Splitting”
12. Aaliyah Perez: “Detectability of Subpolar North Atlantic Climate Change in the Past Century”
13. Anika Reja: “Towards Climate-Resilient Levee Adaptations Using Watershed-Scale Datasets and Site-Specific Geospatial, Geophysical, and Geotechnical Data”
14. Anthony Delgadillo Salas: “Monthly Mean Diurnal Cycles and Soil Conditions Across the Pennsylvania Environmental Monitoring Network”
15. Emilia Turek: “An Automatic Detector for Observing Bay Breezes in Baltimore, Maryland via Doppler LiDAR Remote”
16. Tyler Verschelde: “Exploring Changes in Surface Dust Concentrations in the Mid-Late 21st Century Using WRF/MPI Simulations”

Visit Penn State Climate Science REU Program’s website to learn more about the program.