Win Cowger is an Environmental Scientist at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research. He specializes in advancing science on transport and fate of trash (including plastic and microplastic pollution) in watersheds and river flow (Tracking Trash). If we can track trash, we can identify solutions to plastic pollution and assess their effectiveness. While conducting this research, he encountered major hurdles in Data Science and Spectroscopy which the field needed to overcome to have an accurate understanding of how to track trash and worked to overcome them. His goal with all of this research is to work himself out of a job by using science to end the trash pollution problem. As an applied scientist, he works with professional societies like AGU Thriving Earth, nonprofit groups like Let’s Do It World and 5 Gyres, government agencies like Trash Monitoring Workgroup and the Ocean Protection Council, and academics to implement science in practice.
