Catz Leavers Win Prestigious Prizes for Best Undergraduate Dissertations
St Catherine’s College is delighted to announce the second of two prestigious departmental prizes awarded to two recent graduates. Ted Holbrook (2022, Geography) and Benjamin Beggs (2022, Geography) have each been recognised for their outstanding work on dissertations within their respective research areas on the undergraduate Geography course.
Ben Beggs has been awarded the Met Office Academic Partnership Prize for Best Climate Science Dissertation. Derived from a lifelong interest in climate and its impact on the human population, Ben found more specific inspiration in the geography of Kenya, and dedicated himself to exploring a little-studied feature of the region’s atmosphere. Using field data collected by researchers at the School of Geography and the Environment (SoGE) in 2021, Ben investigated a complex and dynamic component of local climate systems: the behaviour of a low-level jet stream over northern Kenya.
His dissertation successfully offered the first observational insight into moisture transport within this jet, and bolstered the existing SoGE dataset through detailed analysis and original interpretation. During his fieldwork period, Ben examined variations in jet strength, before proceeding to draw significant connections between the jet’s activity and rainfall patterns across the Ethiopian highlands throughout the project. His work represents a valuable contribution to our understanding of rainfall drivers in a drought-prone region, and demonstrates the potential for climate science research to influence future forecasting in vulnerable environments.
The Met Office Academic Partnership (MOAP) was established to reconcile the scientific expertise of the Met Office with that of leading UK universities, thereby producing a range of academic opportunities for undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral students across the country. Created in response to the Met Office’s revitalised Research and Innovation Strategy, the Partnership brings together researchers across traditional and emerging disciplines – from atmospheric science to artificial intelligence – into one formal collaboration dedicated to advancing weather and climate research. MOAP, its contributors, and its honorands represent a bold investment in the UK’s future as a global leader in environmental science.
Throughout his studies, Ben’s academic work has spanned diverse fields – from assessing heat vulnerability across Italy and the ecological sensitivity of Tenerife’s coastal zones, to exploring hydrological change along the Thames – demonstrating his admirable dedication to international geography and its effects. His approach to geographical research has always been thoughtful and interdisciplinary – a virtue which has produced this award-winning dissertation.
We warmly congratulate Ben on this achievement, and we look forward to seeing how this project will continue to shape and influence climate science.