Jacob is a junior in the School of Foreign Service studying Science, Technology, and International Affairs with a concentration in Energy and the Environment and a minor in Biology. Having grown up in San Antonio, Jacob found his love of nature and the outdoors by exploring state and national parks all across Texas, and continues to do so in the Washington DC area. What started out as a personal connection to these environments, though, grew into an academic and scientific curiosity through which Jacob has begun to pursue work in these natural areas. As a research assistant with the U.S. Geological Survey, Jacob has worked with Dr. Thomas Cronin to create a spatial and temporal reconstruction of Arctic sea ice over 10,000 years using ostracod microfossils in marine sediment cores as a proxy to indicate where ice may have existed and when. The prospect of pursuing actual environmental fieldwork very much excites Jacob, lying at the crossroads of his personal call to nature and his academic interest in the environment. As his interests still range broadly from the bugs he finds on trails to the glacial activity he researches, Jacob hopes to further explore these possibilities through the MURF program.