TOLEDO, Ohio —
Archis Ambulkar, a ninth and tenth grade Intro to Robotics teacher at the Toledo Technology Academy of Engineering, recently visited the United Nations for the third World Ocean Assessment Program workshop.
Ambulkar has been involved with this topic for around 20 years, and is an expert in water and waste water, and has presented on the assessments of microplastics and water dumping. The program is designed to "review the environmental, economic and social aspect of the world’s oceans, both current and foreseeable." Ambulkar represented the United States when he visited the program in late November.
About 40 representatives and ocean experts attended the program. A series of workshops related to the program were also held in many countries throughout the globe to share ideas, identify issues and challenges, and promote sustainable ocean use.
"I feel it was very enriching," Ambulkar said. "I was able to meet so many people from different countries that had their own perspective of sharing their thoughts and ideas of the same problems. I think it is eventually going to help for the betterment of society across the globe."
Ambulkar's students were excited for their teacher's trip, and he shared the presentation he had prepared with them. He taught them how things work at the UN in addition to sharing pictures from his trip.
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Ambulkar said he wants to take the knowledge he learned and share that with his students to help them become better professionals.
"They were very excited," he said. "Some said they want to go [to the UN], so I feel good that I'm able to create some sort of motivation that one day they want to be a part of such programs."
All of the input gets used by the writing team at the World Ocean Assessment to work on the next steps of developing scientific knowledge that will eventually be used by governments and policy makers to better the world's oceans.
For more information on Ambulkar's research or to read his articles, click here.
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