The HMEI Environmental Scholars Program provides students with up to $16,000 over a two-year period to pursue an independent research project that culminates in field study as an integral component of junior and senior independent work. Scholars are supervised and mentored by a Princeton faculty member in the summer following their sophomore year and on a continuous basis. Students are nominated to apply during the fall semester of their sophomore year and selection is made by committee. The program is honorific and rewards students who have shown exceptional promise in their academic coursework and in select HMEI summer internships.

The Environmental Scholars Program was established in 2011 with an inaugural gift from Elizabeth A. Smith and Ray E. Newton III ’86 in support of advanced undergraduate scholarship in environmental studies. Awards are structured to cover the costs of a qualified summer research apprenticeship and/or research expenses associated with independent field study connected to curricular junior/senior independent work.

Contact Emily Ahmetaj, Internship Program Manager, with any questions regarding the program.

 

Current Awardee

Rebecca Cho
Class of 2026, Undeclared
“Fish Otolith Organic Matter Isotopic Composition as an Ecological and Paleoecological Indicator”
Daniel Sigman, Professor, Geosciences

 

 

 

Past Recipients

Year Recipient Major Adviser(s) Research Topic
2023 Rio Baran ’25 GEO Adam Maloof Shark Bay as a Calibration Tool for Interpreting Sedimentary Records of Paleoclimate Change
2022 Ethan Sontarp ’24 GEO Satish Myneni Anthropogenic Impacts on Fluvial Organic Carbon Transport in Different Climates
2021 Yaxin Duan ’23 CBE Sujit Datta Direct Visualization of Chemotactic Bacteria Behavior in Transparent Porous Media
2021 Chirag Kumar ’23 CHM Ramanan Laxminarayan Integrating Climate into Fungal Pathogenic Evolutionary Models
2021 Aneesha Manocha ’23 ECE Jesse Jenkins Macro-energy System Modeling in India to Find Least-cost Decarbonization Pathways
2020 Hannah Reynolds ’22 ANT Christiane Fellbaum A Study on Biocultural Diversity: Indigenous Language Loss and the Loss of Biodiversity
2019 Maria Stahl ’20 EEB Robert Pringle Effects of Fire on Herbivore Behavior in the African Savanna
2019 Cole Morokhovich ’20 EEB Mary Caswell Stoddard Investigating the Effects of Climate Change on Broad-tailed Hummingbird Pollination Behavior in the Rocky Mountains
2018 Jack Lohmann ’19 ENG Rob Nixon The Sentencing of Nauru
2018 Luke Carabbia ’19 EEB Christina Riehl Parental Feeding Decisions in the Greater Ani
2018 Tess Jacobson ’19 GEO Gabriel Vecchi Impact of Global Radiative Perturbations on Large Scale Planetary Hydroclimate
2018 Daniel Petticord ’19 EEB Robert Pringle The Ecology of the Leopard Tortoise
2018 Zachariah Smart ’19 EEB Christina Riehl The Effects of El Niño Southern Oscillation on the Reproductive Biology of the Greater Ani (Crotophaga major), a Neotropical Insectivorous Bird
2017 Emily Geyman ’19 GEO Adam Maloof How Do Carbonates Record Sea Level and Seawater Chemistry?
2016 Josh Murray ’18 GEO Blair Schoene A Deterministic Approach to Geochemical Stratigraphy
2016 William Atkinson ’18 GEO Satish Myneni The Effect of Minerals on Organic Carbon Stability in Diverse Soil Environments
2015 Zoe Sims ‘17 EEB Stephen Pacala Coral Reef Acclimatization to Climate Change: Phenotypic Tradeoffs and Environmental Consequences
2015 Adrian Tasistro-Hart ‘17 CEE Adam Maloof Testing Milankovitch Theory with Late Cretaceous Lake Deposits in Bolivia
2015 Marcus Spiegel ‘17 GEO Kelly Caylor Modeling Agricultural Expansion in Zambia to Predict and Minimize Tradeoffs
2015 Paul Yi ‘17 GEO Sonya Legg Process Simulations of Tidally Driven Internal Waves over Rough Topography
2014 Alison Campion ‘16 GEO Adam Maloof Late Paleozoic Ice Age: Carbon and Oxygen Isotopes in Carbonate Parasequences
2014 Elliot Chang ’16 CEE Adam Wolf The Use of Alginate and Chitosan to Purify Leaf Distillates of Organic Contaminants
2013 Rebecca Haynes ’15 EEB David Wilcove, Andrew Dobson A Study of Polices and Attitudes Concerning the Conservation of Central American Felines
2013 Zhaonan Qu ‘15 MA Robert Goldston Lithium Cooling in Tokamak Scrape-off Layer