Project Description

Dr. Jenna Jambeck is an Associate Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia (UGA). She received her Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Florida. She then worked for the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development in Research Triangle Park, N.C. as an ORISE post-doc. She became a research professor at the University of New Hampshire and then moved to the University of Georgia in 2009. She has been conducting research on solid waste issues for 20 years with related projects on marine debris since 2001, especially projects related to location and spatial analysis of debris, debris quantification and characterization, and technology/mobile device usage (mapping, etc.). She also specializes in global waste management issues and plastic contamination. In November 2014 she sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with 13 other women in eXXpedition to sample land and open ocean plastic and encourage women to enter STEM disciplines. She was principal investigator of the NOAA partnership the Southeast Atlantic Marine Debris Initiative (SEA-MDI) and co-developer of the mobile app Marine Debris Tracker, a tool that continues to facilitate a growing global citizen science initiative. Over three quarters of a million litter and marine debris items have been logged and removed throughout the world.

More on Dr. Jambeck and her projects can be found here: http://jambeck.engr.uga.edu/. Follow her work on Twitter @JambeckResearch, @DebrisTracker or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jenna.jambeck, https://www.facebook.com/MarineDebrisTracker.