On April 29th and 30th 2024, Julia Bava, York student and Carolinian Canada intern, presented at the annual NSERC CREATE Summit. This event was hosted by York University and the Lassonde School of Engineering, where graduate students in the CREATE training programs had an opportunity to connect with industry professionals and present their research.
Julia gave an oral presentation and presented a poster about her research, titled, “How Citizen Science, Open Access Shared Data, and Truth and Reconciliation are Linked to the Emerging Biodiversity Market,” where she discussed the importance of environmental finance tools that fund citizen science initiatives.
These initiatives include the Conservation Impact Bond, which supports nature-based solutions for healthy landscapes. Specifically, Julia focused on the impact of our In The Zone Tracker as a multi-dimensional citizen science program for raising plant awareness and generating a net increase in biodiversity.
We are pleased to announce Julia was a recipient of the NSERC CREATE Best Poster Award, placing 2nd overall at the conference! She will continue to analyze the In The Zone data for her thesis and provide further insights about the citizen science in the Carolinian Zone.
Check out Julia's research poster here!