ORANGE, Calif.—Chapman University received $2.2 million in federal funding on April 14 for its Earth Systems Science Data Solutions Lab, which helps track goals for sustainability set forth by the United Nations.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals target concerns related to human health, clean energy, air pollution, and poverty, among other related initiatives.
“[The funding] enables us to invest in the infrastructure we need to build upon this research area,” Chapman’s Dean of Schmid College of Science and Technology—which conducts the research—Michael Ibba, told The Epoch Times.
Ibba said the funds will help in recruiting experts and paying for facilities.
“The use of data in the modern era is growing so fast, we need to be able to recruit top scientists to work in this space and facilities dedicated to this work,” he said.
The funds come from the nearly $30 million secured by Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) for community projects in his 46th congressional district representing Anaheim, Santa Ana, and parts of Orange.
“Today we’re investing in a tremendous first-class university to train our students, our PhD candidates, as well as a lot of students from the communities of Anaheim and Santa Ana, where I grew up and I live, to understand our planet,” Correa said while presenting a check in the campus’s memorial hall to a group of students and faculty members involved in the research.
He emphasized the importance of understanding “interesting weather patterns,” jokingly referring to the massive amount of rain that hit Southern California recently, and understanding how to better predict and plan for such things.
“The research that we’re conducting here today will help people around the world better survive those droughts, better survive those cataclysmic events that happen that we call acts of God,” he said. “If we can figure out what’s coming our way then we’re all better off.”
After presenting the check, Correa and the group were shuttled over to the state-of-the-art $130 million Keck Center, which provides classrooms and facilities for the researchers, where PhD students gave a presentation demonstrating some of their research applied to the congressman’s district.
“We love to share science with politicians and decision-makers because we can come up with solutions for them, but they have to be able to push it and make things happen,” Niko Todorov, a PhD candidate studying Computational and Data Science in the science and technology college, told The Epoch Times.
Rejoice Thomas, another graduate student and PhD candidate told The Epoch Times he advises anyone interested in joining the school’s research programs to talk to the professors and see if they’re interested.
“You can always go and reach out to them directly. You don’t need to be a PhD student to get a hold of the professors,” he said.
