Lexington, Kentucky — On September 19th, SuperCollider 2025 once again united the KY NSF EPSCoR research community under one roof for a day of updates, collaboration, and student-driven innovation. For the first time, SuperCollider was centered around the new Track-1 project, CLIMBS. This year’s event marked a major milestone in CLIMBS’ mission to advance hazard data science, infrastructure resilience, and workforce development across the Commonwealth, to help our Kentucky communities.
Lead project investigator Rodney Andrews and program manager Jeff Mossey kicked off the day with EPSCoR administrative updates, followed by project elements overviews from Czarena Crofcheck and Karin Pekarchik, setting the stage for the morning’s deep dive into the seven CLIMBS research projects.
Each project team shared recent breakthroughs from WKU’s Zachary Suriano’s work on climate pattern analysis to Sebastian Bryson’s advances in landslide mitigation and predictive hazard modeling. These presentations underscored SuperCollider’s central purpose: connection and collaboration across CLIMBS’ disciplines.
After a midday session featuring External Evaluation Lead Julia Melkers and an ECORE presentation during lunch, attention turned to the heart of the event — the Student Research Showcase & Poster Competition. Thirty students presented posters, with 44 volunteer judges evaluating presentations. Across two afternoon sessions, students shared their findings on topics ranging from soil moisture monitoring to atmospheric modeling and community resilience.
When the results were tallied, the top posters were announced before the day transitioned into strategic planning meetings and networking sessions where future collaborations took shape over the last of the (nine!) jumbo press pots of coffee.
With 140 total registrants, SuperCollider 2025 demonstrated once again why it stands as KY NSF EPSCoR’s most comprehensive annual gathering — a collision point for Kentucky’s brightest students, researchers, and innovators shaping the future of storm resilience across the state.
🔹 PhD Winners
Ali Araji – University of Kentucky
Low Cost, High Impact: Compact Broadband Seismometers to Study Upper Mississippi Embayment Groundwater
Advisors: Dr. Ed Woolery, Dr. Seth Carpenter, Dr. Andrea Erhardt
Luciano Cardone – University of Kentucky
Tracking Floods in the Kentucky River Basin
Advisors: Dr. M.M. (Mike) McGlue, Dr. Jason Dortch
Nicole Marks, MEP, CEM – University of Kentucky
And if the Creek Don’t Rise
Advisor: Dr. Crystal Felima, PhD
🔹 Master’s Winner
Scott Furlong – University of Kentucky
Storm Event Nitrate Source Tracking Using δ¹⁵N and δ¹⁸O at Edge-of-Field Water Quality Monitoring Stations in Western Kentucky
Advisor: Dr. Andrea Erhardt
🔹 Undergraduate Winners
Trevor Bramblett – Western Kentucky University
Advisor: Dr. Zachary Suriano, Dr. Greg Goodrich
Marianna Ritchie – Morehead State University
Summer Fieldwork Vignettes from the Morehead State Mini REU
Advisor: Dr. Jen O’Keefe
👏 Huge thanks to the faculty mentors who guided these projects and to all the students who participated with outstanding research.
