March 14, 2011

 

Congratulations to Grey Nearing, PHD student in Hydrology, on being selected as a 2011 ARCS Scholar!  The Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Scholar award was made by the Phoenix Chapter of the ARCS Foundation and the Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

 

Nearing's doctoral research deals with the mitigation of uncertainty in computer models of natural systems. The focus of his project is on identifying conceptual and structural weaknesses in physically-based hydrologic models using evolving Bayesian networks. Evolution is motivated by information theoretic objective functions relating model states to (limited) system observations and can be guided by stochastic models using a reification approach or by the identification of open and closed information pathways. The goal is to identify consistent differences between evolved and ancestor model structures.

 

The ARCS Foundation is a nonprofit organization composed of professional and nonprofessional members who volunteer their services. Their purpose is to make a strong contribution to the future and to America's youth through the advancement of scientific education.

 

The ARCS Phoenix Chapter, currently 79 Active, Associate and Life Members, has awarded $3,544,400 in scholarship monies from 1975-2008 to 626 scholars from Arizona's three major universities, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and The University of Arizona.

 

All ARCS chapters nationwide have awarded $66,342,962 to 12,084 scholars from 1958-2008.

 

Our heartiest congratulations to Grey!