The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is the home of AESEDA at Penn State. The broad interest of EMS faculty in African research initiatives led to the launch of AESEDA.
RESEARCH
Through AESEDA, partners can build and develop collaborative interdisciplinary research initiatives with affiliated faculty.
Faculty Research in Africa
Michael Adewumi (Energy and Geoenvironmental Engineering)
His principal research foci are natural gas engineering, multiphase
fluid dynamics in pipes, phase behavior of gas condensate systems. His research interest interests span natural gas production, processing and
transportation and environmental remediation. He has published widely in the areas of multiphase flow handling of gas and condensate systems,
phase behavior and production processes. He has conducted studies on environmental remediation of impact of oil and gas production in Nigeria and
has conducted many advanced training workshops for the major multinational oil and gas companies, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, etc.
In collaboration with many colleagues, he has been working with quite a number of Universities in South Africa, Angola, Nigeria on major capacity
building initiatives. He and colleagues are also working on developing similar initiatives in several other African countries including Ghana, Mali
and Ethiopia. Most of these initiatives also involve partnership with Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the US, and other institutions
serving underrepresented groups in the US.
Collins Airhihenbuwa (Bio-Behavioral Health)
Collins interests lie in Global Health; African Health and Development; and Health Promotion Interventions. He currently serves as Director of
AESEDA's Center for Global Health. http://www.personal.psu.edu/aou/
Chris Benner (Geography)
Telecommunications and Development in Africa: This project examines forces shaping the location and development
of tele-mediated work in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on three questions: (1) Where is tele-mediated work currently concentrated in Africa and where is
it growing? (2) How do local labor force conditions relate to growth patterns of tele-mediated employment? (3) How do economic development policies and
the structure of business networks shape companies' decisions to locate tele-mediated work in African countries? Answering these questions will provide
valuable insights into factors shaping Africa's participation in one of the most rapidly growing types of employment in the global economy. The project
began with in-depth investigation of the call center industry in South Africa. Research is currently being sought for broadening this work to look at
tele-mediated work in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.
Robert Crane (Geography)
Director for AESEDA Center for Climate Change, Interim Dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.
Research interests are in climatology and remote sensing — more specifically, synoptic climatology,
regional climate change and climate downscaling, polar climates and sea ice-atmosphere interactions.
Current research projects include:
- The Mid-Atlantic Regional Assessment (MARA) of climate change impacts. This is part of the National Assessment of Climate Change (NACC) and is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Ann Fisher, Principal Investigator).
- Global Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources and Ecosystems funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Ann Fisher, Principal Investigator).
- Methods in Integrated Regional Assessment funded by the National Science Foundation (Greg Knight, Principal Investigator).
These projects are large interdisciplinary programs that involve a number of researchers in the Department of Geography and other departments across the campus. Crane’s role has been to develop methodologies for extracting regional scale information from global climate models (GCMs). The emphasis has been on the use of Artificial Neural Networks to develop non-linear transfer functions between the GCM circulation and humidity fields and the local temperature/precipitation response. Much of this work has been conducted in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Hewitson, University of Cape Town.
Paul Desanker (Geography)
Coordinates a research network called the Miombo Network, which addresses issues of land use, ecosystem process
and function, and management of the Miombo ecoregion. This ecoregion includes the dry woodland areas of southern Africa, an area of about three million
square kilometers. Research on ecosystem goods and services are on-going in the Zambezi River basin; as well as land use change, forest dynamics and
management mainly in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania. A research prospectus and details about specific projects are available at
http://www.miombo.org/.
Tanya Furman (Geosciences)
Has funded research and active field program as a part of the Ethiopia/Afar Grand Lithospheric Experiment.
Strong collaborative relationship with faculty and students in petrology and geochemistry at Addis Ababa University. Additional collaborations with
faculty members in Eritrea and Egypt. Currently advising doctoral students working on magmatic processes in Ethiopia. Teaches "Environments of Africa,"
which is cross-listed with African and African American Studies (GN, IL).
Joel Haight (Energy and Geoenvironmental Engineering)
Recently completed a study in the offshore oil industry in Angola to understand and measure
the effectiveness of specific resource allocation to incident prevention activities in the Takula oil field. For this project, he received funding
from the Chevron Corporation and AESEDA to send a graduate student to Malongo in Cabinda Province, Angola. Has presented several health and safety
related short courses for oil industry representatives in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is currently exploring with Chevron,
the potential to establish a collaborative environmental and safety engineering education effort between Penn State and the University of Augustinho
Neto in Luanda, Angola.
M. Thaddeus Ityokumbul (Mineral Processing and Geo-Environmental Engineering)
His research interests include Mathematical modeling of multiphase reactors and contactor and application in design
and scale-up of process equipment, Column flotation and application in mineral, oil and hydrocarbon separations, and
coal cleaning, Environmental pollution control, By-product recovery from waste streams, Carbon dioxide sequestration.
Ityokumbul has worked extensively in capacity building efforts in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular focus on the
Niger Delta region of Nigeria. http://www.egee.psu.edu/Faculty/ityokumbul.htm
Ikubolajeh Logan (Geography)
Director of the AESEDA Center for Land and Community Development Studies.
His research interests include African and Third World development, Human Dimensions of Environmental and Resource
Analyses, Globalization. http://www.geog.psu.edu/people/logan/.
Andrew Nyblade (Geosciences)
Director of AfricaArray and detailed information about his research interests and projects can be found at
http://africaarray.psu.edu/ and
http://geosc.psu.edu/people/faculty/personalpages/anyblade/index.html
Anne Thompson (Meteorology)
Principal Investigator of the SHADOZ (Southern Hemisphere Additional Ozonesondes) network
http://croc.gsfc.nasa.gov/shadoz that has collected over 3000 ozone and radiosonde profiles over
13 tropical stations since 1998. Four of these stations are in Africa - two in Kenya, one each in Benin and South Africa. Thompson has authored a
dozen papers on aspects of these observations pertaining to Africa, a number with African colleagues. She is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of
Kwazulu-Natal in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences.
Petra Tschakert (Geography)
She has been working on the potential for soil carbon sequestration among small-scale farmers in
Senegal and Panama. Currently, she is leading national assessments on carbon sequestration and adaptation to climate change in Ghana, Mali,
Niger, and Burkina Faso. She teaches human-environment interactions and participatory methods.
http://www.geog.psu.edu/people/tschakert/.