AMHERST, Mass. - Guy Lanza, director of the Environmental Sciences Program and professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been awarded a Fulbright grant to assist the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam develop new programs in education and research. Lanza will be in Vietnam as a Fulbright Senior Specialist from late April until mid-June 2006 working with faculty and graduate students.
Lanza will work in three areas. He will develop new curriculum for Vietnam's first master's degree in the environmental health sciences; organize and teach a technical training workshop to faculty on the ecology of waterborne diseases; and design research projects on the ecological effects of hydroelectric dam projects with an emphasis on community-based research and water-quality monitoring techniques suitable for villages in remote rural settings. Vietnam and other nations in Southeast Asia are in the midst of rapid development that seriously threatens freshwater ecosystems and the indigenous cultures that rely on them as a sustainable resource, Lanza says.
Lanza lived in Thailand between 1971 and 1973 working as an aquatic ecologist for the Smithsonian Institution carrying out benchmark ecology and water quality studies of the vast Mekong River ecosystem. He says at that time the Mekong River meandered 2,600 miles from its headwaters in the Himalaya Mountains to its confluence with the South China Sea without a single dam or bridge across it. On subsequent trips to the region he has seen a dramatic change fueled by economic development and increasing pressure on the region's water resources, including the recent proliferation of hydroelectric dam projects in the region.
"Personal experience taught me how regional cultural differences can significantly influence attitudes and preferences on how we deal with environmental challenges," Lanza says. "Vietnam has some of the most pristine and unique biodiversity reserves in the world situated in areas slated for hydroelectric dam projects. I expect to learn a lot about how both the ethnic Vietnamese and the indigenous villagers of the remote northern mountainous regions view and value their ecological systems and the vital services they supply."
The purpose of the Fulbright Scholar Program is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.
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