Sydney Richardson

Sydney spent the week in Sydney, Australia working with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS) on their Project Restore. This project revolved around learning about how SIMS is working with local Sydney communities to restore once thriving Posidonia Australis seagrass meadows to their former glory. In a cross-organization initiative between multiple universities and organizations, SIMS has brought together a team strong enough to combat severe habitat loss. Posidonia Australis is a long green strappy seagrass that covers the shallow waters of Sydney Harbour, though in recent years has seen drastic losses from human caused interventions such as boat moorings, dredging, and foreshore construction. SIMS and their collaborators are restoring these meadows by collecting healthy shoots washed ashore and replanting them by hand and carefully tending to these underwater gardens. Local Sydney community members collect the shoots and SIMS tends to and replants the grasses. These seagrasses support a diverse range of fauna, providing habitat, shelter, and food for a variety of creatures. Threatened animals such as the White's Seahorse, Little Penguins, Green Turtles, pipefish, and sea dragons need seagrass to survive. Thanks to those dedicated to something seemingly as small as pieces of seagrass, large ecosystem-scale changes are being made.
5. Sydney is currently studying how we can take waste plastic and turn it into palm oil using a two-step process using catalysts and microbes. She spends most of her day in the lab trying to come up with a catalyst that can do this in the most earth-friendly way possible: using less materials, less energy, and creating a product that can counteract deforestation. She is foremost a scientist/engineer but is also passionate about art, sustainability, and conservation. She uses a variety of media (such as silk painting, hybrid printing, and painting/drawing) to create art pieces that try to tell a story of why we should care about the environment we as humans live in and are ultimately a part of. After her PhD at Stanford, she hopes to build a career that connects science, art, sustainability, conversation, and the communities her work will impact; and is trying to figure out how she can do her part to help the living beings of this planet.