
Anna Sherrill (left), Dr. Azad Hossain and Nicklaus Kuntzman attended the 2024 AGU Conference in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Anna Sherrill.
Dr. Azad Hossain remembered being a Ph.D. student in the early 2000s visiting the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference, where he nervously but carefully explained his research to world-renowned scientists and researchers.
Now, as an associate professor of geology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he is making sure his undergraduate students are getting the same opportunity.
In December, Hossain—along with senior environmental science majors Anna Sherrill and Nicklaus Kuntzman—traveled to Washington, D.C., for the AGU 2024 conference—where over 25,000 scientists from 100-plus countries gathered to share their ideas and research.
“As a student, there isn’t a better place than AGU,” Hossain said. “You see Nobel laureates who are coming and presenting and all the pioneers in science in your field.”
Their research, titled “Developing Models to Estimate Chlorophyll-a in the Tennessee River Using Remote Sensing,” uses satellite imagery from NASA’s Landsat program alongside water samples collected from the Tennessee River to estimate water quality indicators like chlorophyll and turbidity.
“My responsibility was conducting a literature review, focusing on estimating chlorophyll using Landsat,” said Sherrill, who hails from Charleston, South Carolina. “I looked at about 100 papers revolving around chlorophyll estimation and going through it to find what models work and didn’t work—and how we can apply that to our project.”
Kuntzman explained the hands-on aspects of the project, which involved both fieldwork and data analysis.
“We would bring water sensors out on a boat and collect different water quality parameters like chlorophyll, pH and temperature,” said Kuntzman, a Memphis native. “Then we take that data, run analysis on it in Excel and make regressions with it—then try to make an equation that we can apply to our ArcGIS software.”
The trip was partially funded by a $299,998 NASA ROSES (Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science) grant, which Hossain received last year to support a project he was the principal investigator of titled “Remote Sensing of Water Quality in the Tennessee River.”
The students recognized the importance of this research to a city like Chattanooga, which is rapidly growing in population and on its way to becoming a national park city.
“Our city is only going to get bigger and the water quality is just going to keep going down,” Kuntzman said, “so we can go back and use historical data. It’ll be interesting to see how our water quality has been changing over the years and then see how it’ll change in the future.
“The model, although it is being used for the Tennessee River, can be applied to other rivers and help cities determine what’s going on with their water quality.”
Hossain described the trip as a last-minute adventure. Despite juggling final exams, the three worked to quickly secure more funding and prepare for a successful trip.
Thanks to Sherrill, who reached out to UTC’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavor (URaCE) for additional support, the trip became possible.
“The hardest thing is getting over there,” Sherrill said. “The fact that our school offers these resources is great and (URaCE Executive Director) Lisa Piazza was so helpful in the process. I definitely encourage other students to take advantage of it because you can go so many places with their support.”
Hossain shared the importance of the conference for his students, describing it as an experience that “sparks magic.”
“I think it’s important for students to get this experience,” he said. “They realized what kind of work they were doing when people came by and made comments on their poster. It’s a very valuable experience.”
Sherrill expressed her awe at the size of the conference and the opportunities it provided.
“I took a picture of the whole poster room, and it goes on forever—you can’t see the end of it,” she said. “Going through all of the posters and seeing what they’re doing, and then also realizing, ‘Oh, I have my name on one of the posters,’ was really cool.”
Kuntzman reflected on what it meant to him and Sherrill as undergraduate students.
“When I got there, I was almost emotional sometimes, thinking, ‘Woah, look at me. I’m really here,’” he said. “It inspired me to further go into research and my education.”
Hossain praised his students for their contributions to the research and for their hard work—not only at the conference but also in the effort it took to get there.
“When you do something like this, preparing things can be stressful, but they sustained it and did it,” Hossain said. “They saw firsthand what it means to be part of the scientific community.”
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Nicklaus Kuntzman (left) and Anna Sherrill are senior environmental science majors at UTC. Photo courtesy of Anna Sherrill.