Contact:
Andrea Simakis
Director of Media Relations
Oberlin College and Conservatory
T: 440-775-8485 | C: 440-935-0154
asimakis@oberlin.edu
NEW YORK, NY (August 9, 2024) — Alea Strasser, a 2024 Oberlin College and Conservatory graduate, has been awarded a Fulbright for the 2024–25 academic year.
Strasser has earned a research Fulbright, which allows her to spend the upcoming year as a master’s student at Aarhus University in Denmark and Greenland’s Arctic Research Center.
Strasser, a biology major interested in pursuing climate solutions, previously interned with NASA at the Langley Research Center, where she analyzed remote sensing data — specifically from soil moisture sensors — to decipher climate problems.
“It’s using technology to understand what’s happening in our climate,” Strasser explained. “For example, I really like microbacteria, algae, lichens, and fungi and [studying how to use] those organisms to digest plastics.”
While at Oberlin, Strasser worked as a lab manager for the Living Machine, an ecologically engineered system to treat wastewater and recycle it within the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for environmental studies.
Strasser is one of 19 Oberlin alums or recent grads who have been awarded a Fulbright for the 2024-25 academic year, breaking the college’s previous record of honorees in a single academic year.
The Fulbright Program is the federal government’s flagship international academic exchange program. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research abroad.
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