Penn State Live - Two Penn State geographers receive NSF Career Awards

Two Penn State geographers receive NSF Career Awards

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Two Penn State-affiliated geographers won CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Geography and Spatial Sciences (GSS) program. They are faculty member Brian King, assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Penn State, and alumna Corene J. Matyas (who earned a doctoral degree from Penn State in 2005), assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Florida.

“Both of these awards are particularly important to the department,” said Karl Zimmerer, professor and department head, “as they are tremendous opportunities for professional growth and support for continuing contributions to research and teaching in critical subfields, as well as our role in preparing scholars like Corene.”

King’s research project, "Political Ecologies of Health: Coupling Livelihood and Environment Responses to HIV/AIDS," draws upon political ecology to examine the ways that livelihood systems are transformed by HIV/AIDS. A livelihood system includes the types of opportunities and decisions that individuals, households and families draw upon in order to meet subsistence needs and/or generate income, King said. “Central to my interest in livelihoods are the ways in which access to various types of resources are enabled and constrained by political economic processes, spatial economies and the rules of use constructed by diverse institutions and systems.”

Matyas’ research project, "Geospatial Modeling of Tropical Cyclones to Improve the Understanding of Rainfall Patterns," addresses the need to improve the spatial modelingof tropical cyclone rain fields. Shape analysis techniques employed within a Geographic Information System (GIS) will quantify the extent and locations of rain-producing regions of tropical cyclones, including heavy rainfall regions as defined by radar reflectivity returns.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.