Over 2.5 billion plants were imported into the United States in 2009. This global trade in live plants is a major pathway for invasion by non‐native insect pests and diseases of agricultural and natural resources. Identifying cost-efficient strategies for reducing the economic and environmental risks associated with invasive pest introduction is a major challenge.
As part of the Maryland China Initiative, a SESYNC hosted a delegation of 18 officials from different Provincial Environmental Protection Departments.These delegates are visiting for a two-week program on environmental management and visited SESYNC to learn about how we operate and how we developing programs to create actionable science.
Research Opportunities for Social Science and Humanities Scholars
The Social Dimensions of Environmental Sustainability
Postdoctoral Positions
Early or Mid-career Visiting Fellows
Research Team Support
Solutions to difficult problems at the interface of the environment and human society require the synthesis of diverse types of information from natural and social sciences. Today’s undergraduate and graduate students must develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities that allow them to undertake such synthesis efforts and successfully engage in interdisciplinary efforts to solve socio-environmental problems.
Dignitaries celebrate the opening of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC).
Senator Mikulski speaks on the importance of science and environmental research jobs at SESYNC's opening event.
By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun 7:47 p.m. EST, January 30, 2012 Scientists, economists, politicians, educators and even an artist gathered Monday in Annapolis to mark the launch of an unusual University of Maryland think tank that aims to bring academic disciplines together to tackle thorny environmental issues.
As Director of NSF’s newest synthesis center and its only one focused on bridging social and natural science to address issues of the environment, Margaret Palmer was invited to write a brief article for the journal BioScience. The editors of the journal were particularly interested in SESYNC’s focus on “actionable science”.
Our proposed Pursuit project focuses on ecological wealth and changing human populations in rural forest communities in developed countries. This Pursuit project begins with an over-arching research theme of addressing the extent to which these lands and their associated services stand poised at tipping points. In turn, as we collectively pursue research questions related to this over-arching theme, we will pose and respond to these questions with actionable research goals in mind.
