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Thomas Teisberg, EE PhD Candidate

Thomas Teisberg, PhD candidate receives TomKat Center Graduate Fellowship for Translational Research

Summary

The TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy awarded three Graduate Fellowships for promising, early-stage research on novel climate solutions toward deployment in the world.

Jul
2022

Congratulations to Thomas Teisberg, PhD candidate for being awarded the 2022 TomKat Center Graduate Fellowship. 

The TomKat Center graduate fellowships give three promising researchers each year (four in 2021) the ability to focus their academic efforts on applied research to address sustainable energy and resource utilization challenges. 

Thomas states, "The TomKat fellowship focuses on translational work and deploying technology. In glaciology, it's difficult to find support to scale up the infrastructure and observational systems we need to better understand these complex systems.”

The TomKat Fellowship competition is open to Stanford doctoral students performing translational research for sustainable energy or other sustainability challenges. These fellowships are meant to support advanced doctoral students (third year and beyond) to pursue innovative research projects beyond the proof-of-concept stage toward impactful applications.

About Thomas’ research project
UAV in Iceland during technology testing. Image credit: Stephan Mantler

Temporal ice shelf monitoring: Reducing uncertainty in sea level rise predictions with drones

Sea level rise due to ice shelf melting is an inevitable consequence of climate change. Ice-penetrating radar from crewed airplanes has been the main tool used for taking measurements of ice sheets and ice shelves. Unfortunately, this method is costly, making data largely unavailable. The limited sample of data available leads to significant uncertainties around the degree of sea level rise and its risks.

Through a collaboration with the University of Reykjavík, the University of Bergen, and the University Centre in Svalbard, Teisberg will develop radar instruments and algorithms for drones to collect data in harsh Antarctic environments. The technology will open new opportunities for frequent and real-time data collection, enabling high-resolution ice shelf maps and monitoring of future sea level rise. With more accurate data and predictions, policymakers can formulate appropriate solutions to mitigate the impacts of rising sea levels on vulnerable communities.

Published : Jul 25th, 2022 at 06:42 pm
Updated : Jul 26th, 2022 at 03:26 pm