She returned to family roots for a chance to reveal a changing planet
Northeastern student Emma Collins is set to co-author a study on the coastal environment near Perth, combining data science with field research to help protect crucial groundwater reserves.
Northeastern University student Emma Collins had always known Australia’s West Coast as a place for family vacations, where her mother and father held their warmest childhood memories.
“My parents were both born and grew up there,” she said. “My mama would always say: ‘The blue sky is different here’ or ‘the beaches are different.'”
Growing up, Collins didn’t get why her parents felt the coast around the city of Perth was so special, she said. But having just spent a semester there conducting fieldwork during a co-op placement at the University of Western Australia (UWA), she could see its value.
Since January, Collins has been part of a research project that is revealing how climate shifts are changing the coastal wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain and how groundwater systems are responding to climate change. Bringing data analysis skills from her degree in environmental engineering and data science at Northeastern’s Boston campus, Collins found a new purpose for her data skills in outdoor research that has made her reconsider her future plans and set her sights on a Ph.D. in research, following in the footsteps of her mother and grandfather, who taught at UWA.
Having the opportunity to combine meaningful research, international experience and personal connections made it truly an amazing opportunity, Collins said. “I was able to spend six months getting to know my family while gaining international research experience.”
New outlook
Moving to Western Australia in January was a dramatic change of scenery from Boston. Western Australia has a Mediterranean climate with distinct wet and dry seasons, “which is very different from the northeastern United States,” she explained. Seeing how those differences affect the vegetation and ecosystems “gave me a new appreciation for how environmental engineering challenges vary around the world,” she said.
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Collins took up the position of undergraduate research intern at the Centre for Water and Spatial Sciences, a research centre that investigates sustainable agriculture and natural resource management. As part of the Recharge in a Changing Climate project, which investigates the changing environment of the Swan Coastal Plain, Collins tracked long-term environmental trends, analyzing rainfall and groundwater recharge records dating back to the 1940s.
Using data science techniques she’d learned in her first-year classes, she assembled records from more than 1,900 monitoring wells across the region to produce reports on soil conditions, water table depth, and rainfall distribution. Her findings feed into a research paper currently in preparation for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.”I think my success in the role came from combining my environmental engineering background with my data science coursework,” Collins said. This “gave me the technical skills to analyze large environmental datasets while understanding the physical processes behind them.”
Looking beyond
Although Collins’ coding work meant long days at the computer, the internship provided an opportunity to gain experience in the field, she said. Collins had learned essential environmental monitoring skills in Boston, but fieldwork in Western Australia provided a steep learning curve as she was tasked with collecting water quality samples, measuring groundwater levels, and conducting geophysical surveys. “Seeing how all of these pieces came together to support ongoing research was incredibly rewarding and it reinforced my interest in pursuing a Ph.D. and a career in research.”
Collins’ mother, Jennifer Yates, said that issues she was learning about are an essential part of life in drought-prone Western Australia, where she’d grown up careful about every drop of water. “[Emma] was home – our home!,” she said. “And she was experiencing the dry Aussie bush – kangaroos, spiders and all – that we grew up with.”
The six-month placement left a mark on the entire family. “It was incredible seeing Emma conducting research at the university where her grandad was a researcher,” said Yates, who added that Collins “ never got to meet her granddad as he died of cancer years before she was born. “So it was really special to see her have this connection,” she said.
Even after Collins and her parents moved across the world to the U.S., she was still able to continue a family tradition of studying at UWA; Both of her parents completed their undergraduate degrees at UWA, two aunts also graduated and two cousins are currently studying there, Yates said. “And yes, all of us were engineering students – we do not do variety in this family!” she joked.
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Collins set out with the goal of figuring out if she wanted to study at the postgraduate level and connecting with her family but Yates said she was proud to see her daughter achieve a lot more, as she “grew and matured tremendously through this opportunity.”
“We watched her blossom from afar – as she met new people, built strong bonds with family and visited family friends across Australia,” she said. “A girl who not so many years before had been so nervous to go to college was confidently taking every opportunity to explore the other side of the world on her own.”
