RICE GLOBAL PARIS: SUMMER PROGRAMS 2024
Climate Change, Economics, and the Wine Industry
Paris Session 1 | May 6 - 24, 2024
Climate Change, Economics, and the Wine Industry: Applied Environmental Problem Solving for the 21st Century
Taught by Dr. Sylvia Dee and other collaborators, this highly interdisciplinary course will introduce concepts from climate change to microeconomics, using the wine industry as a case study.
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Program Details:
- Program Dates: May 6 - 24, 2024
- Program Location: Rice Global Paris Center | Paris, France
- Who Can Apply? Any Rice Undergraduate who has taken at least one programming course (preferably in Python). Students from highly relevant majors including EEPS, ENVS, ECON, CEVE, ECE, and COMP may be prioritized.
- Program Total Cost: $1,200 per credit hour ($3,600 Tuition for 3 credit hours) + travel to Paris ($1000-$2500) and living expenses for 3 weeks ($1000-$1500).
- What's Covered: The program will provide housing for all three weeks, local travel, course-set excursions/tickets, three group meals, and travel insurance.
- What's Not Covered: Airfare to Paris, passport fees (if applicable), any visa fees (if applicable), ride to and from the airport, any non-course planned travel/excursions/tickets, International phone plans and/or SIM cards, incidentals, and most meals.
- Financial Aid: Students looking for financial aid to help with expenses should contact the Financial Aid Office to see if and how much financial aid they qualify for. Summer tuition qualifies for some assistance, and in some cases, grants are available
- Tuition Assistance: Students can also apply to receive further tuition assistance and some international travel assistance from Rice Global Paris. Application for assistance is included in the course application.
Course Details:
- Credit Hours: 3 credit hours
- Course Instructor: Dr. Sylvia Dee (EEPS) - lead instructor, in collaboration with Drs. Mark Torres (EEPS), Matthew McCary (BIOS), and Guha Balakrishnan (Rice ECE)
- Course Description: Wine has been produced throughout the subtropics for thousands of years, and is a pillar of the international dining, leisure, and tourism economies. Climate change is altering weather conditions at wineries whose grape production is critically sensitive to seasonal microclimates. This poses a major threat to the wine industry, but also offers opportunities for targeted adaptation. Wine grapes are sensitive not only to climate, but to soil type and health, bedrock geology, and shade (or terroir - all the environmental factors that influence grapes). To adapt and maintain wine economies in France and worldwide, wine makers require high-resolution seasonal climate predictions coupled with geospatial mapping linking grape production and terroir. Themes, Learning Outcomes (LO): This course will immerse students in an environmental problem solving challenge, working in teams to identify climate change ‘choke points’ for wine makers. This highly interdisciplinary course will introduce concepts from climate change to microeconomics, using the wine industry as a case study.
- Who is this class for? This interdisciplinary course is open to students interested in applying quantitative methods spanning Earth & Environmental Sciences, Computer Science and Economics to climate change adaptation problems. We welcome students from all majors who have taken at least one programming course (preferably in Python). Students from highly relevant majors including EEPS, ENVS, ECON, CEVE, ECE, and COMP may be prioritized.
- Course Zoom Information Session: Click here to view the Zoom information session recording.
For questions, visit our FAQ page or email pariscenter@rice.edu. The application deadline is January 26, 2024.
Dr. Guha Balakrishnan
Dr. Guha Balakrishnan (Assistant Professor, Rice ECE): Guha Balakrishnan is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering working in the fields of computer vision and graphics. He is interested in the theory, practical design, and downstream applications of generative models for complex visual data. He is particularly excited by their applications to promote fairness and accountability of vision systems. Guha has also worked on a broad range of medical applications, including developing ML algorithms for medical image registration and remote vital signs measurement from video.
Dr. Matthew McCary
Dr. Matthew McCary (Assistant Professor, Rice BIOS): Dr. Matt McCary is a soil ecologist interested in the fundamental drivers and constraints of soil biodiversity and how soil diversity relates to ecosystem responses to environmental disturbances. His research program is interested in three major questions: (1) how do invasive species change soil biodiversity and associated ecosystem health? (2) How does urbanization impact ecosystem and community processes? (3) How does ecosystem structure affect food web responses to changes in resource availability? He uses an integrative approach to address these questions, including field and lab experiments, ecological modeling, and molecular techniques.
Dr. Mark Torres
Dr. Mark Torres (Assistant Professor, Rice EEPS): The Torres Lab focuses on the biological, chemical, and geologic processes that act to distribute elements across our planet’s surface and interior. While these biogeochemical processes operate across the entire periodic table, the Torres lab is particularly interested in the set of elements and compounds that regulate Earth’s habitability. For example, the Torres Lab is deeply focused on the cycling of water, carbon, and oxygen across a range of surface environments.
Dr. Sylvia Dee
Dr. Sylvia Dee (Assistant Professor, Rice EEPS; Joint Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering), the lead instructor of the course, is a climate scientist specializing in extreme weather events, including flooding and heat, and how these climate changes evolve with Earth’s natural climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña events. She uses climate models and atmospheric physics to constrain future climate impacts in the U.S. and globally.