Principal Investigator
Project Description
We seek funding for a geological field trip program to the Turkana Basin and the Columbia Global Center in Nairobi. We plan to leverage the position of the global center to open collaborations with local geologists and students in Nairobi and to forge a long-term collaboration between Columbia and the Turkana Basin Institute. The proposal includes three winter trips to Kenya; in the first year, a small number of scientists will travel to Kenya to give lectures at the global center, meet with local researchers, and plan a student field excursion to the Turkana Basin; in the second and third years, a larger group of Columbia students participating in a course in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences will travel to Nairobi, meet local students identified through the collaborations established during the first year, travel to the Turkana Basin for a research-focused field trip, and present the results at the Nairobi global center. The participants in this trip will be encouraged to continue to engage in related research at Columbia using the substantial resources of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. This research will also serve as the basis for larger grant proposals to the National Science Foundation that we expect to allow the collaboration between scientists at Columbia University, the Nairobi global center, scientists in Nairobi, and the Turkana Basin Institute to flourish for years to come.
