by wpeeb
Did you know that 25% of our graduate students are self-funded? In Academic Year 2015-16, 14 of our 56 grad students brought in a combined total of over $300k in funding from the following sources:
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Graduate student Morgan Roche (Kalisz Lab) is one of Phipps Conservatory’s six current Botany in Action fellows. The fellows recently visited Phipps, in Pittsburgh, PA, for the Botany in Action program’s annual Science Engagement Week, which featured a series of diverse workshops to enhance the fellows’ scientific communication skills. The fellows explored different ways to communicate their research with those outside of their immediate fields—which included sharing their research with middle school and high school students on the very first day of their workshop!
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Rachel Fovargue (Armsworth Lab) has received a 2016-2017 Yates Dissertation Fellowship! The fellowships provide recognition and financial support to outstanding doctoral students in all fields of study at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville during the dissertation process. Congratulations, Rachel!
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Postdoc J. Mason Heberling (Kalisz Lab) has been awarded a two-year National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship. The proposal, entitled “Leveraging ventures of herbarium data to track plant invasion processes: trait shifts, local adaptation, and rapid evolution,” was funded by NSF’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, Interdisciplinary Research Using Biological Collections program.
The host institutions for this fellowship are the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and the sponsoring scientists are Dr. Stephen Tonsor (Carnegie) and Dr. Susan Kalisz (UT). Heberling will use herbaria worldwide to track trait shifts of invasive plants in the Eastern US through space and time.
For more information, please read his abstract, below. Congratulations, Mason!
ABSTRACT:
The globalization of human activities has reshuffled plant communities across the world, resulting in substantial environmental damage and economic losses. This research leverages centuries of biological collections alongside recent advances in functional trait ecology to understand fundamental plant invasion processes. The frequency and importance of trait shifts following plant introductions, the direction and rate of these potential trait changes, and the degree to which local adaptation influences invasion success remain largely unknown. This project utilizes the extensive collection of the herbarium of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, supplemented with specimens from other herbaria worldwide. These specimens of introduced and native Eastern US species, collected from early 1800s to today, are being used to measure traits relating to carbon gain, resource-use, reproductive/dispersal ability, and phenology across space and time. This novel approach allows the ability to track species trait shifts through space and time – a task that would otherwise be impossible without collections. Main research objectives include using these data to track phenotypic change through the course of plant invasion and assess the role of local adaption to understand and predict species success. Advancing the use of herbaria to the rising field of trait-based ecology will substantially expand existing global trait databases to facilitate research on fundamental biological questions at a large scale.
The training objectives of this fellowship include the development of skills associated with herbarium methods, recent statistical advancements, geographic information systems (GIS), and software development for efficient specimen georeferencing. Career development activities include building research collaborations, expanding past research to include herbarium data and evolutionary analyses, and encouraging diverse participation to highlight the importance of biological collections as a vital source of knowledge to the broader community. Despite availability and relevance, collections-based science has been reported on the decline. This project addresses this disconnect through interaction with community organizations in Western PA, including local elementary education programs and museum docent training.
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Ian Ware (Bailey Lab) has received the Center for Tree Science Graduate Research Fellowship with the Morton Arboretum. The fellowship provides $9500 for students to attend the US Forest Service workshop: Gene Conservation of Tree Species, field research funding, and sequencing funding.
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Chloe Lash (Kwit Lab) has been awarded a fellowship to conduct research on ant seed dispersal this summer at Mountain Lake Biological Station (MLBS) through the University of Virginia’s Horton H. Hobbs, Jr. Endowment Fund. The fellowship provides up to $3,500 towards room, board, and user fees at the station. There, Chloe will also be serving as a mentor for MLBS’s long-running NSF-supported Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, where she will advise an undergraduate awardee’s work on ant seed dispersal.
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One of our alumna has been awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship this year: Sarah Caroline Daws (BS 2015)!
In addition, three EEB students/ alumni have been awarded NSF GRFP Honorable Mentions:
Congratulations!
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Alumna Sara Kuebbing (PhD 2014) has been awarded a Smith Fellowship from the Society of Conservation Biology. The prestigious David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program seeks to develop future world leaders and entrepreneurs who are successful at linking conservation science and application. Congratulations, Sara!
From the press release:
The Smith Fellowship, the nation’s premier postdoctoral program in conservation science, seeks to find solutions to the most pressing conservation challenges in the United States. Each Fellow’s research is conducted in partnership with a major academic institution and an “on the ground” conservation organization to help bridge the gap between theory and application.
Emerging from an impressive pool of Ph.D. applicants from around the world who competed for the Fellowship are five outstanding scientists who will comprise the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship class of 2016:
…
Sara Kuebbing will complete a project titled, “Invasion Treadmills: mechanisms that promote reinvasion of sites after removal of nonnative species” under the academic mentorship of Dr. Mark Bradford at Yale University and working in partnership with Drs. John Randall and Kris Serbesoff-King of The Nature Conservancy.
…
While the Fellows’ research projects focus on urgent conservation issues, they also learn firsthand the challenges and rewards of conservation applications. The program’s focus is to enlarge their professional opportunities and ensure future success by helping them build relationships in the conservation and research communities and by providing opportunities for professional development through targeted workshops and training events.
The fellowship is named after the late Dr. David H. Smith, founder of the Cedar Tree Foundation, and pediatrician, inventor and conservationist.
The Smith Fellowship seeks to identify and support early-career scientists who will shape the growth of applied conservation biology. It’s also an opportunity for scientists to develop solutions to critical environmental challenges, said Dr. Michael P. Dombeck, executive director of the Smith Fellows program and former chief of the United States Forest Service.
“The Smith Fellowship enables young scientists to improve and expand their research skills and direct their research efforts toward problems of pressing conservation concern, to bridge the gap between research and application,” Dombeck said.
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Jessica Bryant (Classen Lab) has been awarded a Yates Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Tennessee. Congratulations!
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The 2015 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships have been announced; Jordan Bush (Simberloff Lab) and Todd Pierson (Fitzpatrick Lab) each received one. Congratulations!