Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta Receives 2019 AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science
March 4, 2019
Dr. Ramírez-Andreotta describes herself as an environmental health scientist who wants to "democratize science"
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Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta recently was awarded the 2019 Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science, presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was recognized for her work involving communities most impacted by pollution, poor water quality, and food insecurity.
The assistant professor of the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science traveled to the 185th AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. on February 16 to receive the award that recognizes early-career scientists and engineers who demonstrate excellence in their contribution to public engagement with science activities.
For more then a decade, Ramírez-Andreotta has led collaborative and innovative research projects that weave impacted communities in to the fabric of the scientific process. Ramirez-Andreotta currently leads Project Harvest with a $2.26 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The citizen science project engages local community health workers and more than 150 families in Arizona's underserved neighborhoods to analyze the safety and quality of water collected through rainwater harvesting systems. The environmental health scientist also founded Gardenroots, a now nation-wide citizen science project that trained and educated 100 participants in Arizona to collect soil, water, and plant samples near hazardous waste mining sites to evaluate the state of environmental quality in underserved rural communities.