Brian Ebel has traveled the world, taking advantage of the opportunitites the University provided.
By Gerry Everding
May 18, 2001
Brian Ebel had plenty of opportunities to go away to college, but decided to remain in St. Louis and attend Washington University. His parents, who both graduated from the University, were thrilled by his decision to study close to home --they couldn't have been more wrong.
Brian Ebel has traveled the world, taking advantage of the opportunitites the University provided. |
In his four undergraduate years, Ebel has made four research trips to Hawaii, including a full semester at the University of Hawaii, where he studied Hawaiian geology and volcanology, meteorology and high-temperature geochemistry (how volcanic rocks form in the interior of the Earth).
For his senior thesis, he conducted and published a hydrologic study on the environmental impact of a proposed observatory expansion on Mauna Kea Summit.
Ebel also has spent a summer participating in research and meeting astronauts as a fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He assisted in field studies of a Mars rover prototype in California's Mojave Desert. And he cared for the elderly at a homeless shelter in Prague, Czechoslovakia, as part of a spring break service project.
His research interests have extended from the Missouri River bottoms to Madagascar, places for which he used Landsat satellite images to develop maps and other data in support of field studies; to the dry lake beds of California's Silver Lake, for which he developed a prototype simulation model to estimate diurnal variations in temperature; to a 2001 mission to Mars, for which he conducted experiments to determine how much dust might cling to the spacecraft's solar panels.
As part of a science and mission control team headquartered at the University, he experienced firsthand the thrill of Steve Fossett's 1998 "round the world" balloon mission.
"Friends of mine who went away to college elsewhere can't believe it when I tell them about all the opportunities I've had at Washington University," said Ebel, who will receive a bachelor of arts degree in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and a minor in business administration.
Ebel's exploits have earned him admission this fall to the prestigious hydrology doctoral program at Stanford University. He credits much of his success to his close relationship with Raymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences. A 25-year veteran of NASA research, Arvidson has been instrumental in nudging Ebel and other students toward elite careers in the sciences.
"Brian is a rare individual," Arvidson said. "He is gentleman and a hard-working student who excels academically. He has also become my friend, someone with whom I will keep in contact with for the rest of my career."
Arvidson has served as Ebel's adviser and mentor since his freshman year, when he was selected to take part in the Hewlett Program in Environmental Sustainability, an innovative, cross-disciplinary, two-year program of intensive studies of environmental topics. As part of the Hewlett Program, Arvidson led Ebel and other students on extended educational tours of California's Mojave Desert and Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. Arvidson and Ebel also worked side-by-side capturing data from a science payload aboard the Fossett balloon.
"Often when you're a freshman, it seems you get stuck in huge lecture classes and you don't get to know the professors that closely," Ebel said, "But with Hewlett, there's a sort of mentorship that develops right away. Dr. Arvidson offered me a summer job working on projects in the lab, which was a pretty rare opportunity for someone who just finished his freshman year."
Ebel hopes someday to be offering these same sorts of opportunities to his own students. He decided on Stanford because six long years of doctoral studies there puts him on the fast track toward his goal of hydrology research and teaching at the university level.
Where would he like to teach?
Well, don't tell his parents, but he'll be studying at Stanford under one of the world's leading experts on the hydrology and geomorphology of a small island state known as Hawaii.
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