Dr. Vanessa Vargas-Nguyen, Alexandra Fries and I represented UMCES IAN at the third annual Sustainability Research & Innovation (SRI2023) conference in Panama City, Panama.

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Before engaging with the community through a listening session in Cumberland, Maryland, we explored Cumberland and Frostburg while learning more about its history and environment.

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We held our midterm meeting for the Ocean Sustainability program, funded by the Belmont Forum. The meeting was held on the Open Day of the Sustainability Research & Innovation 2023 conference in Panama and was a hybrid event. There are 13 projects in the Ocean Sustainability program, and each project provided a brief overview of their progress.

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After the release of the 2022 Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Report Card, the IAN team and GSS scholars hold a stakeholder listening session in Alexandria, Virginia.

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The GSS Scholars canoe the Potomac River from Brunswick to Point of Rocks, experiencing the effects of the current drought firsthand.

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Dr. Xin Zhang has assembled an international consortium of agricultural researchers in a program entitled “Sustainable Agriculture Matrix: A transdisciplinary and transnational network to guide the pursuit of sustainable agriculture”. The consortium includes researchers from the United States, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Austria, and sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Ghana, and Morocco). Xin, and her faculty research assistant Kevin Jackson, organized two Sustainable Agriculture Matrix (SAM) workshops, the first workshop was in Istanbul, hosted by Dr. Levent Ozturk in October 2022. The second workshop was in Panama in June 2023.

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On 22 June 2023, the building housing the Institute for Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) in Baltimore, Maryland was renamed the Rita Rossi Colwell Center in a gala event. It was a spectacular evening of tributes to Rita, organized by IMET Director Russell Hill and his capable staff.

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On 6 June 2023, we released the 2022 Chesapeake Bay Watershed report card along the shore of the Potomac River in Alexandria, VA. This was the first time that we released the annual Chesapeake report card in Virginia, and we featured speakers from Maryland and Virginia. Following our speakers, I gave my remarks about the report card results and their broad implications.

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At a press conference held by UMCES IAN at Daingerfield Island’s Washington Sailing Marina, the annual Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Report Card was unveiled. Alongside the Chesapeake report card, a Potomac River and Watershed Report Card was unveiled for the first time as a part of the Belmont Forum COAST Card Project. Read more about the new elements included within the report card, and what the 2022 grades have to tell us!

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Horn Point Laboratory Director Mike Sieracki and Carin Starr organized a nice event at the Cambridge Packing House. The event featured eight graduate students and their advisors from Horn Point Laboratory. Each graduate student had nice displays, including videos, live organisms, and colorful posters. I loved the diversity of students and the diversity of projects that were being undertaken.

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