Climate & Resilience Workshop Recap

As a student working at the Lovejoy Center, I was glad to be able to attend the Arizona Institute of Resilience’s (AIR) Climate & Resilience Workshop on April 24th, 2026. 

The workshop was organized around two main themes: AI and climate research, and water conservation. On the AI side, a presenter from the Office of Responsible AI walked through how AI models actually work, which was useful context for the broader conversation about where these tools fit into climate science. Dr. Gupta's presentation on HoverTEM stood out as a concrete example of how remote sensing technology is being applied to environmental monitoring, and it was a good preview of the systems thinking approach I'll be working with in her course this fall.

The water conservation track was also useful to the direction my graduate work is heading. Dr. Hickenbottom's presentation on water reuse and contaminant management connected to some of the water-energy tradeoffs I've been writing about in my IRP research. Sitting with Leona Davis, the director of the Masters’ in Resilience Practice program which I will be starting in the fall, during the sessions was a good chance to hear how the Resilience Practice program works with these issues, and I came away with a better sense of how the different AIR centers approach climate adaptation from their respective angles.

Overall it was a productive day for making connections across AIR. I met Dr. Collinge, the director of AIR, as well as several other faculty I'll be working with next year. The workshop helped me see where my policy research interests fit within the broader AIR ecosystem.