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Julia Weiss
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2024 PhD Plant Sciences
Julia Weiss
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2024 PhD Plant Sciences
Our planet is undergoing simultaneous transformations, with climate change, habitat degradation, pollution, invasive species, disease, and overexploitation posing significant threats to the environment. To truly grasp the impact of these pressures on species, it is essential to delve into their long-term implications and understand how they synergistically interact and cascade within an ecosystem. These are questions that have fascinated me since my undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan. My research in India, where I collaborated with Professor Trevor Price at the University of Chicago, examined the effects of land use change on avian communities and morphology. During my master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh, I studied a different environmental stressor - microplastic pollution. I investigated its interplay with water temperature, aiming to understand how warmer oceans might influence microplastic uptake in sponges. At Cambridge, I will pursue a PhD in Plant Sciences under Professor David Edwards. I will be studying avian communities in Borneo to unravel temporal changes within logged and pristine forests and assess how climate change might exacerbate the impacts of land degradation.
Previous Education
The University of Edinburgh Marine Systems and Policies 2021
University of Michigan Ecology Evolution Biodiversity 2019
Bennett Weissenbach
- Deferred, Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2023 PhD Polar Studies
- Lucy Cavendish College
Bennett Weissenbach
- Deferred, Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2023 PhD Polar Studies
- Lucy Cavendish College
I am a journalist and writer from Los Angeles. My work explores the relationship between my generation’s environmental and technological inheritances. As an undergraduate at Princeton, I used breaks to embed with scientists in Alaska, visiting the largest glacier in the American Arctic, living off-grid in winter to research permafrost, and walking and packrafting across the Brooks Range to study the boreal forest’s poleward migration. After graduating in 2020, I received a Luce Scholarship to study the climate crisis in Nepal, but after the pandemic derailed my plans there, I instead reported on the economic and health impacts of COVID-19. My writing has appeared in the LA Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Literary Hub, Washington Post, and other publications. I am now writing a narrative nonfiction book — equal parts adventure, science, cultural criticism, and nature writing — that recounts my journeys into the Alaskan wilderness to study climate change and shed light on digitally induced blindspots in my generation’s environmental consciousness. As a PhD candidate in Polar Studies at Cambridge, I plan to continue exploring these questions under the mentorship of Professor Michael Bravo. In my free time, I run trails, surf, and volunteer as an ocean therapist.
Previous Education
Princeton University English 2020
University College London English 2018
