December 11, 2012
Rose Cory, PhD, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering at Gillings School of Global Public Health, is one of nine researchers in the U.S. to receive the 2012 Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry award.
 
In July, Dr. Rose Cory collected water samples from the Sagavanirktok River in the Alaskan Arctic.

In July, Dr. Rose Cory collected water samples from the Sagavanirktok River in the Alaskan Arctic.

The award enables Cory to advance her research in environmental chemistry and its potential impacts on global warming by providing funds to hire postdoctoral student Sarah Page, PhD, recent alumna of the University of Minnesota.

 
Cory studies the process by which organic carbon, trapped in frozen permafrost soils in the Arctic for thousands of years, may be converted to carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and the potential role of that chemical conversion in global warming.
 
“We know that increasing global temperatures will thaw these ancient arctic soils, leading to increased opportunities for this carbon to be released as carbon dioxide, with the potential to reinforce the warming effect of carbon dioxide at global scales,” she said. “But we need to understand the chemistry and magnitude of these alterations in the arctic carbon cycle, and how these changes will influence the climate of our world in the next 50 to100 years.”
 
“I was thrilled to learn that my proposal was funded because the need for understanding the role of environmental chemistry in today’s warming world could not be greater,” Cory said.The Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation funds innovative, fundamental research in the chemical sciences related to the environment and aims, with the postdoctoral fellowship award, to further the development of scientific leadership in the field of environmental chemistry.

A Carolina Public Health article describes Cory’s and her department’s research efforts.


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UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.

 

 

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