AAG Member David López-Carr Named AAAS Fellow for 2014
AAG member David López-Carr has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for 2014. He is being recognized for advancing the scientific understanding of the couple process of human population dynamics and environmental change. “I’m honored to receive this award from my peers,” said López-Carr, a professor in UCSB’s Department of Geography, Director of UCSB’s Program in Latin American Studies, and Director of the campus’s Human-Environment Dynamics Lab. “I consider it a reflection on the quality of UCSB, our geography department, and the students in the HED lab.”
Dr. López-Carr’s work focuses on population dynamics, particularly the links between migration and fertility and terrestrial and marine resource use in Latin America and between population and health vulnerabilities to climate change in Africa. He integrates diverse data sources, including extant socioeconomic and demographic data, remotely sensed imagery, and field-based surveys.
López-Carr received a bachelor’s degree in Spanish literature (with a minor in geology) from Bates College and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of North Carolina, where he also held a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship in biostatistics in the School of Public Health and the Carolina Population Center. In addition to Spanish, he speaks Portuguese, Italian, French, and rudimentary Q’eqchí Maya.
He has received various academic honors, including the 2002 Nystrom Award for outstanding paper based on a dissertation in the field of geography. In 2013, he was one of a select handful of geographers and social scientists chosen as Kavli Frontiers of Science fellows. He is also the former chair of the AAG Population Specialty Group (PSG) and the Human Dimensions of Global Change Specialty Group (HDGCSG).
401 members were named AAAS fellows for 2014. Each new fellow will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin at the 2015 AAAS annual meeting in San Jose, California, in February.
