A graduate student at the University of Iowa has won an award to create outreach activities explaining climate issues.

Briante Najev, a first-year graduate student in Department of Biology, won a British Ecological Society grant.

With the award, Najev will lead an activity, called EcoStax, with people across eastern Iowa, particularly Muscatine and Davenport. In this activity, which was created by the National Center for Science Education, participants build an ecosystem, then try to keep it stable under the duress of climate change, helping to make climate issues local and personal.

It’s the first external grant for Najev, who is part of the iBio graduate program and is a researcher in the lab run by Maurine Neiman, associate professor in biology.

“I have recently started becoming more interested in scientific outreach as I have noticed that the some of the general public want to know more about science but cannot receive information without digging for it,” says Najev, who is from Fort Wayne, Indiana. “I think bringing science education to forefront is something desired by the public but not as accessible as can be.”