Presidential Young Investigator Award: City Structure and Regional Change in Europe

该奖项通过国家科学基金会总统青年研究员计划为Alexander Murphy博士提供支持。该计划的目标是为一些国家最杰出和最有前途的年轻科学和工程教师提供研究支持。该奖项旨在提高美国学术机构的能力，以满足学术和工业研究和教学对高素质科学家和工程师的需求。该奖项将允许墨菲博士继续他在政治地理学方面的研究，研究欧洲和全球其他地区不断演变的区域结构和意识形态。他计划特别关注欧共体（European Community）内关键地区的发展，首先从布鲁塞尔开始。这座城市在西欧一体化过程中发挥了核心作用，未来几十年可能会发生巨大的变化。除了研究在动态重新定义的区域内特定地点的作用和关系外，研究者还将研究在区域内施加巨大影响的中央机构内的权力集中，并探讨这种集中对人类使用和滥用自然环境的影响。在研究美国太平洋西北地区的区域结构和水资源分配之后，将分析中欧北部斯海尔德河沿岸的水资源利用和污染，从而加强对区域结构调整对环境影响的理解。

This award provides support for Dr. Alexander Murphy through the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Program. The objective of this program is to provide research support for some of the nation's most outstanding and promising young science and engineering faculty members. The awards are intended to improve the capability of U.S. academic institutions to respond to the demand for highly qualified scientists and engineers for academic and industrial research and teaching. This award will allow Dr. Murphy to continue his research in political geography on evolving regional structures and ideologies in the Europe and other parts of the globe. He plans to pay special attention to development of critical locales within the European Community, starting with Brussels, a city that has played a central role in the integration of Western Europe and that likely will undergo dramatic transformation in the next decades. In addition to studying the role and relationships of specific places within dynamically redefined regions, the investigator also will examine the concentration of power within central institutions that exert great influence within regions, and he will explore the implications of such concentrations on human use and misuse of the natural environment. Studies of regional structures and water allocation in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. will be followed by analyses of water use and pollution in along the Scheldt River of north central Europe, thereby enhancing understandings of the environmental impacts of regional restructuring.