With the Energize Colleges student internship program in its second year, a new set of eleven interns are working hard on their individual sustainability projects.
One project involves intern Paul Bernabe doing research on the campus’ fog catcher and identifying ways to collect data once fog season begins.
Paul, a computer science major, installed a data collector and a solar-powered BloomSky weather station to be able to monitor the weather and collect data on weather patterns. Skyline College has two BloomSky systems — one that was donated by the company and a second was purchased with President’s Innovation Funds. The BloomSky weather station now provides our campus and community live weather data and video, as well as archives of past videos in time lapse. After installing the data collector and weather station, Paul created a manual to share with anyone who would like to work with the fog catcher as an independent study project or future internship.
Since research surrounding fog catchers is in its infancy globally, Paul is working on a website to share information gathered from his current research. The website will not only promote the work being done at Skyline College, but it would also be a valuable resource for groups interested in fog catchers.
Check out our campus weather live! Download the “BloomSky app” on your mobile device and click on the BloomSky named “Ella”. https://www.bloomsky.com/consumer#app. To learn more about Paul’s research or the work of the other 10 Energize Colleges interns, come to the Research Symposium on April 27 in the Fireside Dining Room.
For more information, contact: Dr. Carla Grandy, Earth Sciences professor at grandyc@smccd.edu, Alex Fuentes, Energize Colleges Program Coordinator at afuent14@my.smccd.edu and Paul Bernabe, Fog Catcher Intern at pauldanielbernabe@my.smccd.edu
Article by Alex Fuentes, Mary Thomasmeyer and Dr. Carla Grandy