MEDS 2022
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Bio
Alex Vand is a master’s student at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, pursuing a degree in environmental data science. Alex holds a B.S. in Physical Geography from UCSB, where she gained foundational knowledge in ocean and atmospheric science and global biogeochemical processes. During her undergraduate career, her studies focused on utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) for spatial analysis and data visualization. Through her past work in logistics, tourism, and education, Alex was exposed to the negative effects of consumerism and the disproportionate environmental impacts on underserved communities. As a result, she is interested in pollution prevention and remediation and optimizing waste management as we build sustainable communities at all socioeconomic levels. Alex was initially drawn to join Bren’s first cohort for the Masters in Environmental Data Science (MEDS) program in order to develop her programming skills in languages such as R, python, and SQL. As a graduate student at Bren, Alex has become captivated by the interdisciplinary field of environmental informatics and the value of scientific reproducibility and collaboration. Her emerging interests include education within environmental data science and open science methods. A unifying theme to her research is addressing climate injustices by studying our constantly changing planet as we prepare for a wildly different future.