nor
Undergraduate Nora Dunkirk, was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation REU fellowship this summer to work at the Sevilleta LTER. Nora will be conducting part of her senior honors thesis at the SEV this summer.
Undergraduate Brandy Pieper (Classen Lab) was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation REU fellowship this summer to work in Puerto Rico at the LTER Luquillo Forest site. You can follow Brandy’s summer field work on her blog: http://www.pieperstravels.blogspot.com.
Five Six current or incoming EEB students were awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships or honorable mentions:
Awards:
Update 2: Angela Chuang has decided to enter EEB in the fall; numbers have been updated to reflect this.
| Institution | Awards + Honorable Mentions |
|---|---|
| University of California-Davis | 16 |
| University of Washington | 13 |
| University of California-Berkeley | 9 |
| University of California-Santa Cruz | 9 |
| Cornell University | 8 |
| University of Minnesota-Twin Cities | 8 |
| Princeton University | 7 |
| Texas A & M University Main Campus | 7 |
| University of Tennessee Knoxville, all departments | 7 |
| University of Tennessee Knoxville, EEB only | 6 |
| Colorado State University | 6 |
| Michigan State University | 6 |
| University of Florida | 6 |
| University of Arizona | 5 |
| University of Colorado at Boulder | 5 |
| University of Georgia | 5 |
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 5 |
| Utah State University | 5 |
| Indiana University | 4 |
| Oregon State University | 4 |
| University of California-Santa Barbara | 4 |
| University of Chicago | 4 |
| University of Michigan Ann Arbor | 4 |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | 4 |
| Pennsylvania State Univ University Park | 3 |
| Stanford University | 3 |
| University of California-Los Angeles | 3 |
| University of California-San Diego | 3 |
| University of Montana | 3 |
| University of South Florida | 3 |
| Yale University | 3 |
| Arizona State University | 2 |
| Harvard University | 2 |
| Montana State University | 2 |
| Oklahoma State University | 2 |
| Purdue University | 2 |
| SUNY at Stony Brook | 2 |
| University of California-Irvine | 2 |
| University of Hawaii | 2 |
| University of Idaho | 2 |
| University of Illinois at Chicago | 2 |
| University of Kansas Main Campus | 2 |
| University of Missouri-Columbia | 2 |
| University of Notre Dame | 2 |
| University of Pittsburgh | 2 |
| University of Texas at Austin | 2 |
| University of Utah | 2 |
| University of Vermont & State Agricultural College | 2 |
| Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University | 2 |
| American Museum Natural History | 1 |
| Boise State University | 1 |
| Boston University | 1 |
| Central Michigan University | 1 |
| College of William and Mary | 1 |
| Dartmouth College | 1 |
| Emory University | 1 |
| Florida Gulf Coast University | 1 |
| Florida International University | 1 |
| Florida State University | 1 |
| Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology – University of Hawaii Manoa | 1 |
| Humboldt State University | 1 |
| Humboldt State University Foundation | 1 |
| Kent State University | 1 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1 |
| Miami University | 1 |
| Missouri State University | 1 |
| North Carolina State University | 1 |
| North Dakota State University Fargo | 1 |
| Old Dominion University | 1 |
| Portland State University | 1 |
| Rutgers University New Brunswick | 1 |
| Salisbury University | 1 |
| San Francisco State University | 1 |
| San Jose State University | 1 |
| Syracuse University | 1 |
| Texas State University – San Marcos | 1 |
| Trustees of Boston University | 1 |
| Tufts University | 1 |
| University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus | 1 |
| University of California-Riverside | 1 |
| University of Central Florida | 1 |
| University of Connecticut | 1 |
| University of Maine | 1 |
| University of Massachusetts Amherst | 1 |
| University of Nevada Reno | 1 |
| University of New Hampshire | 1 |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 1 |
| University of North Carolina at Charlotte | 1 |
| University of Oklahoma Norman Campus | 1 |
| University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras | 1 |
| University of Virginia Main Campus | 1 |
| Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | 1 |
Institutions with no awards or honorable mentions not listed.
Note that for this table, ecology and systematics correspond to NSF categories “Life Sciences – Ecology”, “Life Sciences – Systematic Biology”.
(From left) Kelly Sturner (NIMBioS), Jessica Bryant (EEB), and Emily Austin (EEB) met with Hunter Bethea, a legislative assistant of Sen. Corker.
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Department graduate students Emily Austin and Jessica Bryant along with Kelly Sturner, NIMBioS Education & Outreach Coordinator, were invited to visit the office of U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) to talk about NIMBioS’ and EEB’s involvement in the USA Science & Engineering Festival. The group spoke with Hunter Bethea, legislative assistant to Corker, about how participation in federally-supported science education and outreach programs, such as NSF research experiences for undergraduates and Department of Energy education programs, led them to pursue science careers, and now inspire them to give back through participating in science outreach.
The USA Science and Engineering Festival on April 28 and 29 in Washington, DC brought the excitement of science to people from around the country. EEB and NIMBioS teamed up and presented two booths in the festival. Emily Austin and Jessica Bryant, Classen lab graduate students, taught Science Fest attendees about fungal decomposition of wood using decaying logs in terrariums. Sarah Wood, an undergraduate in the Classen Lab, and Kelly Sturner, education and outreach coordinator in NIMBioS, taught visitors about intra- and inter-specific variation in Solidago plants by having them measure stem and leaf traits. Both booths encouraged observations, data collection and graphical analysis. Many Science Fest attendees were families with elementary or middle school-aged children, but several teachers were there to pick up science project ideas for their classrooms. In all, an estimated 300,000 people left the event having learned at least one thing: science is exciting!
(From left) Kelly Sturner (NIMBioS), Jessica Bryant (EEB), and Emily Austin (EEB) met with Hunter Bethea, a legislative assistant of Sen. Corker.
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Department graduate students Emily Austin and Jessica Bryant along with Kelly Sturner, NIMBioS Education & Outreach Coordinator, were invited to visit the office of U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) to talk about NIMBioS’ and EEB’s involvement in the USA Science & Engineering Festival. The group spoke with Hunter Bethea, legislative assistant to Corker, about how participation in federally-supported science education and outreach programs, such as NSF research experiences for undergraduates and Department of Energy education programs, led them to pursue science careers, and now inspire them to give back through participating in science outreach.
The USA Science and Engineering Festival on April 28 and 29 in Washington, DC brought the excitement of science to people from around the country. EEB and NIMBioS teamed up and presented two booths in the festival. Emily Austin and Jessica Bryant, Classen lab graduate students, taught Science Fest attendees about fungal decomposition of wood using decaying logs in terrariums. Sarah Wood, an undergraduate in the Classen Lab, and Kelly Sturner, education and outreach coordinator in NIMBioS, taught visitors about intra- and inter-specific variation in Solidago plants by having them measure stem and leaf traits. Both booths encouraged observations, data collection and graphical analysis. Many Science Fest attendees were families with elementary or middle school-aged children, but several teachers were there to pick up science project ideas for their classrooms. In all, an estimated 300,000 people left the event having learned at least one thing: science is exciting!
Two UTK EEB alumni are involved in work at Oak Ridge National Labs this summer on the effect of rising carbon dioxide levels on plant growth. Colleen Iversen was a graduate student in EEB and is now an ecoysystem ecologist at ORNL, while Lauren Breza was an EEB undergrad. Both worked in Aimee Classen‘s lab while at UT.
Melissa Cregger, a PhD student in the Aimee Classen lab, was just awarded the 2011 Marvin L. Wesely Award from the Department of Energy. The award was established in honor of the late Dr. Marvin L. Wesely, Argonne National Laboratory senior meteorologist and chief scientist of the DOE Atmospheric Chemistry Program, who died Jan. 20, 2003 from heart cancer. The Marvin L. Wesely Fellowship is awarded to the Graduate Research Environmental Fellow (GREF) who has made the best use of their DOE mentor and facilities in improving the quality of his/her research efforts. The award is given for a one-year period to a current GREF fellow who has been supported to do global change research as part of the Global Change Education Program.
This year’s recipients of the Cokinnius grad student awards were Melissa Cregger and Phillip Hollingsworth.