Students Crunch Data for Federal Agencies to Help Thwart Global Crime and Drive Trade Growth
Middlebury Institute/January 2025
Why would a country without a navy import significant amounts of submarine materials?
This is exactly the kind of puzzle that federal agencies are looking to solve as they monitor global trade. But that requires crunching quite a bit of data.
A mirror gap analysis (MGA) compares one country’s reported cumulative exports and its trading partners’ reported cumulative imports for the same item. These numbers should balance, but as Institute students have found, they often do not—for a variety of reasons.
Sea star research takes a Monterey Bay Aquarium team on Antarctic expedition
Monterey Weekly/April 2024
George Peterson struggles to describe the Antarctic landscape, referring to the fantastical surroundings found in Lord of the Rings or Star Wars as the closest available comparison. However, underwater the environment was dishearteningly familiar. After more than 240 team dives, three organisms showed signs of sea star wasting syndrome in the Southern Ocean.
The bold and the beautiful: Couple pursues ‘crazy dream’ to grow orchids
California Bountiful/Summer 2024
Alison Glasco fell in love with the enigmatic orchid after first falling for Bas van Eijk, a newly arrived Dutch flower farmer with generations of cucumber growers and cattle ranchers in his family.
“I was just in awe of this Dutch guy,” she recalls. “It’s quite a little bit crazy, but here we are doing this crazy dream together.”