Ana Stringer

Project focus: The Fellow will explore how small, locally governed AI models can support community data sovereignty and environmental decision-making — through a hands-on demonstration build, public documentation, and participatory governance guidance. 

Ana Stringer is an Arctic researcher who grew up on the shores of the Arctic Ocean in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, a hub for Arctic research. Her experiences there shaped her interest in how environmental data are produced, governed, and made useful to the communities they concern. Her research combines computational and qualitative approaches to understand environmental change across Arctic communities. She has used high-resolution satellite imagery and deep learning to map landfast sea ice—a critical platform for safe travel, hunting, and food access—across more than 60 Arctic coastal communities. In Utqiaġvik, she has conducted community-based and ethnographic research examining how changing weather and landscape conditions shape where, when, and how people travel across coastal and inland environments. Her master’s research examined bowhead whaling in Kivalina, Alaska, using qualitative methods.