Food on social media
AtmoSci alum w
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company that is promoting health products. “I wanted to understand who is posting this information, and if people are following the advice. Ultimately, the goal is to find a way to reduce the amount of bad information that people are paying attention to, and to see if we can find a way to use social media to get people following legitimate health advice.” So, the next time you’re scrolling through Instagram or Facebook and happen across a new recipe, have fun cooking – just make sure you double-check how healthy the food actually is. And then, of course, share a photo of the results.
When meteorologists along the coast start predicting hurricanes later this year, they’ll be relying on data from a UWM alum working almost 2,000 miles away. Christopher Rozoff is a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. He and a team of scientists are studying some of the deadliest natural disasters to strike the United States. Their question: How you can tell which hurricanes will be mild and which ones will become the next Katrina?
By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
“I’m specifically interested in improving the prediction of hurricane intensity, which has proven to be a difficult problem,” Rozoff said.
Privacy on social media
An eye on the weather
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She’s stepped into that role beyond her UWM research as well; Bishop sits on the Youth Advisory Board for the Technology and Mental Wellness research group, a group of UW System faculty interested in researching the role technology, including social media, plays in youth mental health. Bishop, the oldest board member, meets with other teens who hear researchers’ study proposals and offer feedback based on their own experiences. “It’s been really fun,” Bishop said. “It’s a way to get a younger influence into proper research. High schoolers don’t get the opportunity to work with 40-year-old researchers, usually.” Usually, but once again, Bishop bucks the trend. She began undergraduate research before she was even an undergraduate. UWM’s UR@UWM summer program invites exceptional students accepted to the university, including Bishop, to work with faculty mentors on a research project the summer before they begin college. Bishop worked with Campos-Castillo and continued when she matriculated this past fall. Bishop says her experiences have been wonderful, and have made her think about her own social media use. “I think that social media is like a double-sided coin,” she said. “One side is so positive and loving. You can make friends and meet incredible people. But there’s that other side, where if you fall into those negative Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook groups, you can spiral and fall into depression. “Everything still happens in real life; it’s not a horrible thing to put the phone down.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science 10 • IN FOCUS • April, 2020
Rozoff has been a weather geek since he was a kid. That love of storm-watching and identifying clouds carried into his college career when he entered UWM and majored in atmospheric sciences and mathematics. He remembers being surprised by just how exciting and informative his classes were. “The atmospheric science program had really top-notch professors and the classes really prepared me well,” he said. “When I got to graduate school at Colorado State University, I felt ahead of the curve.” After graduate school, he took a postdoc position at UW-Madison where he collaborated with scientists across the country for research projects that eventually helped him land a position with NCAR. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is a multidisciplinary lab that has a finger in almost every weather-related pie. From climate to solar dynamics to theoretical meteorology, scientists at NCAR collaborate with universities and researchers around the world on topics that will help society better understand our atmosphere. “It’s just a very exciting place,” Rozoff said. “The best aspect of my job is being able to go to work and learn something new every day. Some days are headaches where you just run into debugging computer codes and other dead ends, but even that’s rewarding because turning roadblocks into puzzles to solve often leads to new successes and rewards.”
