Cohen

Jillian Standish Cohen, a doctoral student in the field of natural resources at Cornell, has been named a Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow. Starting this February, she will spend one year working for the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources.

The Knauss program matches 40 highly qualified graduate students who have an interest in ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources and in related national policy decisions with "hosts" in the legislative and executive branches of government in the Washington, D.C., area, for a one-year paid fellowship. Cohen, who received her Master of Science degree from Cornell in 2009, will join the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources staff and work closely with the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs. The subcommittee has jurisdiction over such areas as fisheries management, wildlife conservation, estuarine protection and Sea Grant programs; it has held recent hearings on issues including the Endangered Species Act, President Barack Obama's ocean policy and restoration of the Everglades.

While at Cornell, Cohen was a 2008 recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a Doris Duke Foundation Conservation Fellowship. She was also president of the Cornell Biogeochemistry Graduate Student Association and the Department of Natural Resources Graduate Student Association. Cohen combined her academic and research with outreach to community stakeholders by leading an effort among Cornell graduate students to create a "report card" for Cayuga Lake.

The Knauss program is named for one of Sea Grant's founders and a former NOAA administrator, John Knauss. The fellowship is sponsored by NOAA's National Sea Grant College Program, which works with coastal communities and a network of the nation's top universities to conduct scientific research, education, training and extension projects that foster science-based decisions about the use and conservation of aquatic resources.

New York Sea Grant, a partnership between the State University of New York and Cornell that supports the economic and environmental health of New York state's marine and Great Lakes coasts, endorsed Cohen's candidacy for the fellowship.