Deirdre Collins, a 2017 graduate of Georgetown University, has been selected as a Rhodes Scholar from the nation of Bermuda. She will begin study this coming fall at the University of Oxford, pursuing a master’s degree in environmental change and management.
Collins, a native of St. George’s, Bermuda, majored in biology at Georgetown. While at Georgetown, she was a research assistant in the Biosignatures Lab, worked on the student newspaper, volunteered with the university’s Afterschool Kids Program and was a leader of the GlobeMed, a network of students who partnered with grassroots organizations on public health projects.
Collins spent a semester studying abroad in Lyon, France. She participated in a summer research program with NASA, where she traveled to Alaska to participate in the Juneau Icefield Research Program. Collins conducted original research on alpine ecologypresented her findings to the American Geophysical Union.
After graduation from Georgetown, Collins returned to Bermuda and became a certified scientific diver with the American Association of Underwater Sciences. She currently serves as an investment analyst for the New York Green Bank, a $1 billion state-sponsored fund that invests in clean energy.
“I am driven to study climate change as it relates to politics, business economics and climate science because it poses an enormous threat to every continent on the planet,” Collins said. “We have never seen a global issue quite like climate change. The decisions we make today will impact us decades down the line.”