Compounding with a growing number of new challenges caused by the evolving COVID-19, climate change remains a global priority. The multidimensional negative impacts of climate science are more pronounced in the Global South and Africa in particular. These regions witnessed increased possibilities of severe droughts, floods, and storms threatening their social and economic future.
Against this background, AIMS alumni are not only concerned about climate change challenges but continue to demonstrate their passion in applying their mathematical skills in contributing to innovative solutions to address them.
Capitalizing on the past cohort experiences, AIMS continues to use the Mathematical Sciences for Climate Resilience Internship Program (MS4CR-IP) as an important Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) instrument to increase and showcase the contribution of Mathematical Scientists to address pressing climate change-related challenges. Being the largest intake so far, the 4th cohort provides more WIL opportunities to AIMS alumni. It equally increases AIMS’s influence in attracting new strategic partners such as the African Centre for Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD 1 ) to implement MS4CR-IP with impact.
The current cohort comprises 51 AIMS alumni including 42% women hereafter referred to as ‘MS4CR-IP interns‘. Selected through a competitive application process, these AIMS alumni represent 12 African countries. 2 For the next 6 months, the MS4CR-IP interns will be embedded in 17 private and public sectors partner institutions to contribute to various climate change research projects.
As the first publication of MS4CR-IP’s new series of blogs, this article welcomes and introduces a team of 51 AIMS alumni who are hosted by 17 industry partners. The above diagram puts the face to the brain behind the solutions to address the 51 identified priority projects.
Leveraging the AIMS WIL Remote Strategy that was tested in previous cohorts, 61% of the internships will be done remotely to respond to COVID-19 restrictions that recommend a reduction of in-person work capacity across various organizations.
While these WIL opportunities improve their domain knowledge in the fields of disaster management, meteorology, agriculture, water, food security, MS4CR-IP interns also gain high-quality work experience to solve very practical societal problems.
Future blogs will each share specific use cases that each host institution has defined as priorities and assigned to MS4CR-IP interns in the area of Climate Change Resilience. We will zoom into more detail of the MS4CR-IP intern’s work at each of the 17 host institutions. Each blog will provide a description of the challenges identified in each project. It will also provide relevant information on the potential impact of the proposed solutions. Stay tuned to learn more about the diversity of projects and the quality dimension of the solutions brought forward.
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