Briana Guingona Awarded The Environmental Studies Research Award
Briana Guingona (Environmental Studies Major; Sustainability, Sustainable Food Systems, & Studio Art Minors) was awarded the Environmental Studies Research Award. This award is given to the senior Environmental Studies major who, in the judgment of the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences faculty, has done the most outstanding work in independent environmental research.
Briana (‘Bri’) has worked closely with Dr. Iris Stewart-Frey in the Water and Climate Justice Lab on several key projects, including coding to analyze and visualize climatic shifts in Northern Nicaragua that are affecting smallholder farmers and historically marginalized populations at the local scale. She also supported understanding the user experience of a climate resilience app (‘NicaAgua’) in collaboration with a Nicaraguan development organization. Bri co-developed a survey, analyzed the results, and developed design graphics for better visualization of climate information for diverse audiences; She is the co-author of a peer-reviewed publication approaching submission. Bri won a two-year Clare Boothe Luce Fellowship and has presented her research in several settings, including national and international conferences (i.e. Guingona et al., American Geophysical Union 2023). She has the ability to work at both the higher level of understanding why something is done, as well as the fine-grained level of determining the best way to figure out a solution.