​URECA Undergraduate Research Excellence Award 2019 to ASE students Manimaran Sonali and Regine Tiong Hui Yi

Our warmest congratulations to ASE undergraduates Regine Tiong Hui Yi and Manimaran Sonali who have been awarded the URECA Undergraduate Research Excellence Award 2019. The award is presented to URECA students who have demonstrated excellent research experience & achievement throughout the 11-months of the URCEA Programme and comes with a certificate as well as $300 monetary award.

Sonali’s URECA research project, titled ‘What is the value of nature in tropical coastal cities? Systematic literature review of cultural ecosystem services in the urban tropics’ focuses on cultural ecosystem services (CES), such as tourism and recreation. Despite a current large interest in valuing ecosystem services, there is a great lack of studies in the tropics, and particularly coastal tropical regions. Through a systematic literature review, Sonali summarised the values of various CES in different coastal ecosystems and identified trends as well as knowledge gaps in CES studies. She found that majority of the studies employed economic valuation techniques, and that coral reefs was the most commonly valued ecosystem. The study also compared and discussed the implications of differing values between various CES. The supervisors for this project were Dr Natasha Bhatia from ASE and Dr Erik Yando from NUS (Department of Geography).

Regine’s URECA research project, titled ‘What happens after the Neptune’s pearls are lost’, was conducted in Sydney, Australia. She also won Best Poster Award earlier this year. Using DNA metabarcoding analysis, she was able to show how a decline in the key forest-forming seaweed Neptune’s pearls led to changes in the diversity and composition of benthic microbial communities, preventing recolonization and leading to a shift from highly productive seaweed forest to barren areas. Supervisors were Assoc Prof. Federico Lauro from ASE and Dr Ziggy Marzinelli from the University of Sydney and SCELSE).