Snapshot Wisconsin Visits SESYNC

Located in Annapolis, Maryland, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) brings together the science of the natural world with the science of human behavior and decision making to find solutions to complex environmental problems.

SESYNC hosts a variety of workshops and short courses to equip researchers and students with the skills needed to tackle socio-environmental problems. One unique aspect of the SESYNC workshops is that they provide full funding, which makes them more accessible to a wider variety of attendees. This year, myself and two members of the Snapshot Wisconsin team applied to attend “The Summer Institute” which focused on building data and software skills while allowing time to work on a mini project with direct support from data scientists. To say we were excited would be an understatement when our application was accepted!

The week-long workshop was divided into a series of morning lessons on manipulating and managing data while allowing afternoon time for hands-on help from data scientists. We all walked away that week with wonderful memories, new connections, greater confidence in our programming skills and a huge toolkit that we were able to share with the rest of the Snapshot Wisconsin staff. Additionally, we were able to make further progress on our mini project that we are very excited to share with our volunteers in the upcoming months. Here’s a hint: how awesome would it be to visualize Snapshot Wisconsin’s massive dataset?

Thank you SESYNC, and stay tuned volunteers! 

Snapshot Wisconsin team members Sarah Cameron, Emily Buege and Vivek Malleshappa