The CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research (CIDER) at UC Santa Cruz will benefit from a portion of a $71.1M federal grant awarded to the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation and partners in the Monterey Bay area. Part of the NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, the funding will support collaborative projects to build climate resilience across the region.
UC Santa Cruz will receive more than $2 million from the award to improve education and training programs, including CIDER. Starting in 2025, some of that funding will cover the cost for four students per year to attend an intensive two-week summer program culminating in commercial drone pilot certification. Their training will focus on environmental applications of drones and contribute to UC Santa Cruz’s goal of building a skilled local workforce that can implement climate resilience measures.
“There are many applications for drones in land management, environmental monitoring, forestry, coastal change monitoring, and agriculture, so building drone skills among our future workforce could produce big benefits for regional climate resilience,” says Becca Fenwick, co-founder and director of CIDER.