Elspeth Collard

Elspeth Collard is a senior at the University of Richmond and hails from Alexandria, Virginia. She is an environmental health major, a course of study she created through the university’s Interdisciplinary Studies program. The major examines the intersection of environmental studies and public health with a particular focus on populations disproportionately impacted by issues in these fields. She is a student researcher on the University of Richmond’s NASA SERVIR-Amazonia applied sciences team. She previously spatially analyzed the socioenvironmental impacts of road proposals across a region in the southwestern Amazon. She now studies the impact of Covid-19 on Indigenous communities in these same areas. Elspeth plans to further investigate how air quality, worsened by agricultural and deforestation fires, could exacerbate the effects of Covid-19 and other respiratory conditions on Indigenous peoples.