Living ESR’s Mission

The summer of 2024 was an exciting one for the Education Team at ESR. Through two different efforts, we were able to fully live out ESR’s mission to ‘increase societal understanding of the Earth System though scientific research and public education.’

The first effort was a collaboration between Northeastern University (NU) Seattle and ESR scientists and educators (Schanze, Town, and Anderson). We mentored five data science and data engineering masters students through a challenging machine learning (ML) problem as part of the Northeastern University Seattle’s Experience Expo. The brain child of ESR scientist Julian Schanze, the NU Seattle students developed a viable ML model to predict sea ice extent in the Bering Sea region as it grows back from its summer minimum. Their model used novel feature data near and dear to Julian’s heart, sea surface salinity! Find out more about team NESSIE and their accomplishments at the Northeastern University Seattle’s Experience Expo 2024.

The second effort was a continuation of an ongoing summer program of ESR scientist and educator Mike Town’s design. For years, Town has run summertime, mentored data science and geoscience experiences for secondary students in partnership with local schools. In 2024, ESR successfully brought this program in-house with two talented students participating, now called the Earth and Space Research – Summer Institute (ESR-SI). Swaraag S., a rising high school Senior, was tasked with preparing atmospheric data as boundary conditions for a model of snow. In prepping the data, he discovered an instrumentation anomaly in the relative humidity data. It was news to us! Fatou J., a rising Freshman, learned the basics of scientific programming this summer, gamely teaching herself Python as well as learning about the climate of Greenland. Her experience culminated with exploration of some weather data from Summit Station, Greenland.

Read about our interns, and find out more about their work and experiences below: