Research Line-up

I did quite a bit of school work last weekend. It was more of the brainstorming nature, but very important, laying the foundation for much of the semester.

First, for my one class at the Business School, Environmental Entrepreneurship, my final project will be developing a business plan for The Remediators, an entrepreneurial business that cleans up contaminated soil using fungi. More details to follow.

Second, I developed an outline for my second research paper for the Environmental Law Climate Change workshop on Climate Change. For this paper, I will writing about the “Hydrological Effects of Alpine Glacier Recession in the Pacific Northwest.” Once again, expect more insight in a future blog posting. Photos below are of the South Cascade Glacier in Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Finally, after thinking about the myriad of options for the Venture Capital (VC) research paper for way too long and coming to the realization I know very little about the VC industry, I stumbled upon a topic that is both interesting to me and relevant at the same time. I was looking into foreign VC investment as well as Cleantech (alternative energy) VC growth and somehow I combined the two and will (pending approval) be writing on the “Growth of Cleantech Venture Capital in China.” It sounds really easy, but it took me awhile to arrive at this topic (Google surfing and lexis searching) and I very satisfied with it. Once the idea was set, I went into high gear and produced a nice outline in a fraction of the time. This should be fun – more details later.

Photo: AFP/Liu Jin

As you can see, I’ve got a lot of environment related research and issues to work on. I definitely want to be involved in bettering the environment and addressing climate change through legal means and entrepreneurship. I hope these courses will give me the opportunity to explore this interest.