Florida Tech Undergraduate Earns NSF Lake Titicaca Research Award

– Aaron Collins, a Florida Tech biological sciences major, has earned a $6,000 National Science Foundation award. The award funds research at Florida Tech
to unravel the climatic history of Lake Titicaca, Peru/Bolivia. Collins will investigate millennial-scale climatic oscillations documented in sediments
deposited in the middle of the last ice age, that is, between 30,000 and 70,000 years ago.

He will seek to determine if the pattern of climate change reflects that of the North Atlantic or that of Antarctica. Both positions have vigorous
supporters.

Collins’ work is part of a larger ongoing research effort, led by Dr. Mark Bush, professor of biological sciences, to investigate the climatic history of
the high Andes over the last half million years.

Called a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) award, the funding provides Collins with a stipend and pays for research supplies. He is from
Scotland.