Student Profile: Owen Doherty

SoMAS graduate student Owen Doherty

Owen Doherty, a Ph.D. student, was honored as the recipient of the 2008 J.R. Schubel Graduate Fellowship, an award named for former Dean and Director of MSRC Jerry Schubel and bestowed upon graduate students committed to translating science into forms that are accessible to the public and/or inform public policy. Guided by advisors Nicole Riemer and Kirk Cochran, Owen studies mineral dust in the atmosphere.

As an undergraduate at Cornell, Owen worked with a local elementary school teacher to develop a curriculum for teaching basic meteorology to fifth graders. “Many elementary school teachers don’t have strong science background but want to know more about science,” says Owen. “It was great to combine their teaching expertise with my knowledge of science to come up with a series of lessons that kids could enjoy.”

Owen also worked on a program in the south Bronx that studied whether planting trees on the outskirts of parks and schools would reduce atmospheric particulates of less than 2.5 microns that can cause respiratory health problems. He and other researchers worked with community groups to plant trees and deploy instruments to measure particulate matter. Owen enjoyed talking to non-scientists about the research going on in their neighborhood. “A lot of people had never seen scientific equipment up close,” he says. “I think it made the world of science a little more accessible.”

As part of his Schubel Fellowship commitment, Owen has created a blog that discusses environmental issues in a non-biased way, particularly issues that face Long Island and the New York metro area. On the blog he presents and analyzes Interesting research results, scientific peer-reviewed journal articles, and media stories. A recent blog post, "How Now Brown Cloud" was a discussion of the smog, soot and dirt clouds that obscure the Earth’s surface from space. Owen discussed the importance figuring out what exactly causes brown clouds over Asia to form so regularly each year. An earlier blog post explained how meteorologists were not to blame for major league baseball's poor decision to play Game 5 of the World Series during a strengthening coastal storm. You can read more of Owen's writing at the Metro Environmental blog at http://nyenviro.blogspot.com/