An AGNR Cornerstone Event: Optimize Urban Environments Through Design, Green Technology, and Community Engagement

4th Annual AGNR Cornerstone Event

Thank you to everyone who attended our AGNR Cornerstone event! We had a great time continuing to build partnerships around our Optimizing Urban Environments strategic initiative. A shout out to our special guests, Provost Jennifer King Rice and our keynote speaker, Kate Orff.

Poster Session Winners

Poster Session Winners

The theme of this year's Cornerstone event was "Optimizing Urban Environments" and there were 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in this Strategic Initiative category. 

1st Place - Sarah Na (ENST): Renewable Energy from Fermented Food Waste

2nd Place - Geoffrey Zhang (FIRE and INFO): The Impact of Light Rails on Urban Air Pollution

3rd Place - Boyoung Park (PSLA): The Economic effects of Parks Best Management Practices (BMPs) and Land Cover on Housing Sale Prices in Washington, D.C.

Runners Up for Optimizing Urban Environments 

Integrated Water Resource Management - Bryn Martin, Kelsey Moody, Hannah Savio, Bridget Stokes, Ella Battish, Anushka Tandon (PSLA):  Future Flows

Community Climate Resilience - Qianyao Si (ENST): Exploring Internet of Things (IoT) Sensors for Monitoring Stormwater Dynamics at Three Urbanized Campus Catchments in College Park, MD

Planning, Design, and Housing - Sarah Ponte (ENST): Managing Stormwater with Urban Forests: Transpiration Rates and Whole-Tree Water Use by Deciduous Species in Maryland, USA

The remaining four strategic initiatives categories had one 1st place winner each.  

Establish a Healthy Food System

Ridwan Ahmed (ANSC): Weighted Single-step GWAS identifies genes influencing fillet color in Rainbow trout

Advance Agricultural Production Systems

Zabdiel Alvarado-Martinez (CBMG): Prevalence and antibiotic resistance pattern of Campylobacter in the dairy farms of Maryland-DC area

Ensure Healthy Watersheds & Chesapeake Bay 

Danielle Delp (ENST): Pairing Bioenergy and Bioremediation on Farms: Anaerobic Co-digestion of Algae with Manure and Food Wastes

One Health

Arunraj M. Rajendrakumar (VTMD): Modulation of host immune response by parasite derived protein

Event Information

Keynote Speaker

Kate OrffKate Orff, RLA, FASLA, is the Founding Principal of SCAPE. She focuses on retooling the practice of landscape architecture relative to the uncertainty of climate change and creating spaces to foster social life, which she has explored through publications, activism, research, and projects.

She is known for leading complex, creative and collaborative work processes that advance broad environmental and social prerogatives. In 2019, Kate was elevated to the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Council of Fellows—one of the highest honors bestowed on landscape architects practicing in the U.S. She currently sits on the Commission on Accelerating Climate Action for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Kate was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2017, the first given in the field of landscape architecture. In 2019, she accepted a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, on behalf of SCAPE, and was named a Hero of the Harbor by the Waterfront Alliance. She was a 2012 United States Artist Fellow, dubbed an Elle Magazine “Planet Fixer”.  Kate graduated with a Bachelor’s in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia with Distinction and earned a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). She is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Read: Q&A with Kate

Sponsors

ANOVA logo Green Theory logo Victor Stanley logo