ENViSion

ENViSion 2025

Part of the University of Arizona's annual EarthWeek celebrations ENViSion will take place March 27th 8am to 6pm.

ENViSion 2025 is a student research symposium showcasing cutting edge research by over 50 graduate and undergraduate students through poster and oral presentations as part of the University of Arizona's EarthWeek celebration.

EarthWeek is a School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES) week-long celebration of the incredible research across its seven units. Each year, ENViSion is planned and run by graduate students in the Department of Environmental Sciences with financial support from our engaged alumni, friends and corporate sponsors.

ENViSion 

March 27, 2025 | ENR2 Courtyard | 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

This event is open to the community and facilitates interactions between students, staff, faculty, alumni, professional attendees and this year community college students. 

Keynote Speakers
Image
Chris Lamont Brown

Dr. Chris Lamont Brown 

Director of Research and Education

North Carolina Environmental Justice Network 

Dr. Brown is an environmental scientist who specializes in making science accessible to all. Growing up in the desert, their love of the environment is rooted in the southwest and blossomed in the southeast. They received their Ph.D. in Zoology at NC State in 2015. Since then they’ve been learning grassroots organizing skills to apply to the field of public science with the vision of science that supports accessible and liberated futures.

Image
Dani Lin Hunter

Dr. Dani Lin Hunter 

Research Manager

North Carolina Environmental Justice Network 

A social scientist with strong foundations in environmental science and community engagement, Dr. Lin Hunter's work has focused on ensuring that science operates in service to people and not the other way around. Dr. Lin Hunter earned her Ph.D. in Ecology with a Human Environment Interactions emphasis from Colorado State University in 2022. Since then, she has worked at North Carolina State University managing the Crowd the Tap participatory science project that focuses on identifying and addressing lead contamination in household drinking water. 

Schedule

8:00 a.m. | Breakfast and Poster Session 1
9:30 a.m. | Keynote: North Carolina Environmental Justice Network
10:15 a.m. | Oral Session 1
12:00 p.m. | Lunch and Networking
1:00 p.m. | Alumni Panel
2:00 p.m. | Oral Session 2
4:00 p.m. | Poster Session 2 and Happy Hour 
 

Donor Wall

 

Image
SRP
Image
Montgomery and Associates
Image
Ramirez-Andreotta Lab

 In Honor of Benjamin Karls - Bradley and Marcia Karls

 In Memory of Dr. Markus Tuller - Marcel Schaap

Francis Cowell | Robert Root | SAEMS Tucson | Joan Curry | Jon Chorover| Frank Fischer | Ana Soto | Sharon Megdal | Center for Environmentally Sustainable Mining | Julia Green | Michael Crimmins | Priyanka Kushwaha | Justin Clark | Emily Rockey |

There are no upcoming events listed.

Our students are leading the way in environmental science, below you will find the winners of the ENViSion 2024 student presentations: 

Graduate orals: 

1st place: Taylor Thornton (MS) 

2nd place: Neeraja Setlur (PhD) 

3rd place: Jhon Del Aguila Pasquel (PhD) 

Honorable Mentions: 

Brooke Byars (PhD) and Mery Touceda Suarez (PhD) 

Graduate posters: 

1st place: Andréa Martinez (MS) 

2nd place: Anu Sethuraman (PhD), Ghiwa Makke (PhD), and Santiago Valencia (PhD) 

3rd place: Ma'in Alghzawi (PhD) 

Honorable mentions: 

Kendra Wissinger (MS), Garrett Hagen (MS), Melissa Jacquez (MS), and Susan D Perez (PhD) 

Undergraduate oral: 

Jacob Galloway 

Undergraduate posters: 

1st place: Kielah Dyer 

2nd place: Renata Martin 

3rd place: Caroline Shults 

Honorable mention: 

Alexia Vance

Graduate orals

1st Place: Russell Noon - "Impacts of microplastic contamination on soil systems and resulting plastivore population dynamics through environmental selection"

2nd Place (3-way tie): 

Taylor McCoy - "Evaluation of growth rate effects in Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and butter lettuce (Lactuca satival) from mealworm substitution in feed in ras"

Susan D. Perez - "Conditional Stability Constants for Five Synthetically Derived Glycolipids"

Tomasz Wlodarczyk - "Unconventional approaches to explore metal accumulating plant species"

Honorable mentions:

Willliam Borkan and Jason Windingstad

Graduate posters

1st Place: Xenia De Gracia - "Characterization of mine tailings from legacy mines"

2nd Place: Benjamin Karls - "Parametrization Fate and Transport of Energetics on Training Ranges"

3rd Place:  Neera Setlur - "In-situ Sequestration of PFAS from Contaminated Groundwater using Injectable High Affinity Cationic Hydrophobic Polymers"

Honorable mentions: 

Andréa Martinez, Christian Ayala-Ortiz, and Taylor Thornton

Undergraduate Presentations

1st Place - Nandita Parekh - "Getting the Dirt on Urban Garden Contamination: Environmental Monitoring in the University of Arizona Community Garden"

2nd Place - Ana Soto Velázquez - "Can the integrity of field soils be sustained for greenhouse studies?"

3rd Place - Alexia Vance - "Bathroom contamination due to 3 different hand-drying methods"

Over 35 ENVS students created lightning talks* on their research and projects for the virtual University of Arizona Earth Week 2021 (still in COVID-19).

*Lightning talks are short presentations (less than five minutes) that provide a concise overview about a topic.

ENViSion Winning Lightning Talks

All participating students pre-recorded lightning talks about their research and/or project using a few key PowerPoint slides. ENVS faculty reviewed the presentations and awarded cash prizes for the top three presentations for graduate and undergraduates.

Graduate orals

1st Place: Kendra Bonsey - "Gut microbiome and arsenic bioavailability and transformation"

2nd Place: William Borkan - "Uranium transport through porous media"

3rd Place (3-way tie): 

Asama El Ouni - "In situ biosequestration for the remediation of uranium"

Chance Muscarella - "Enzymes as useful indicators of nutrient mineralization"

Matthew Bigler - "Contaminant transport and pore-scale fluid flow" ***no video available

Undergraduate orals

1st Place: Favianna Cubello - "Transport of Composition B"

2nd Place: Benjamin Karls - "IMX-104 transport in overland flow in rill"

3rd Place: Tyler Rodshagen - "Future environmental conditions on Streptomyces griseus" ***no video available

Art and Environmental Science

The ENViSion Planning Committee wanted to highlight the creative side of ENVS students. They have many talents. The committee proposed the question:

What do you find inspiring about the environment?

Participating students submitted art pieces ranging from photographs to poetry and from watercolor to bookmarks. Very diverse styles. Winning art was selected by a student and staff panel. The winners are, Maria Touceda Suarez (ENVS doctoral student) and Matthew Bigler (ENVS doctoral student). Their art was transformed into magnets and stickers provided to students participating in 2021 Earth Week. 

STUDENT STATEMENTS & ART

Over 40 of our students created lightning talks on their research and projects for the virtual University of Arizona Earth Week 2020 (due to COVID-19)

Lightning talks are very short presentations (<5 minutes) to give a concise overview of scientific research.

Winning Lightning Talks

During a live virtual event with over 100 attendees across the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, three environmental science students (Richelle Thomas, Chelsea Mendoza and Ariel Leger) placed in the top 4 out of fifteen lightning talks.

Richelle Thomas - "Mining Contamination & Diné Medicinal Plants"

Chelsea Mendoza - "Testing Field Kits for Citizen Science"

Ariel Leger - "Restoring Arizona's Drylands"

Selected Other Lightning Talks

Several students opted to share their talks publicly after the University of Arizona Earth Week 2020.

Nick Buchanan - "Biogeochemistry of Mine Reclamation"

Mohammad Gohardoust - "Comparing Numerical Models"

Kunal Palawat - "Cooking for Environmental Justice"

Rae Pickens - "Creating Climate Art"

Rylie Gosiak - "Dissolved Organic Matter & Critical Earth Zone"

Sarah Abney - "Environmental Genomics for Safe Agriculture" 

Serena Conde - "Marine Ecosystems in a Warm Future"

Justin Clark - "Microbiology & Safe Irrigation Water" 

Christina Morrison - "New Tool for Food Safety"

Kendra Bonsey - "Toxicity of Arsenic in Mine Tailings"

Chance Muscarella - "Transport of Legacy Munitions in Soil"

Mackenzie Moore - "Water Quality at the University of Arizona"