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Dr. Lou Gross named Fellow of the Ecological Society of America

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The Ecological Society of America is pleased to announce its 2023 Fellows. The Society’s fellowship program recognizes the many ways in which its members contribute to ecological research, communication, education, management and policy. This year, the ESA Governing Board has confirmed seven new Fellows and ten new Early Career Fellows.

Fellows are members who have made outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by ESA, including, but not restricted to, those that advance or apply ecological knowledge in academics, government, non-profit organizations, and the broader society. They are elected for life. 

Read more here: https://www.esa.org/blog/2023/04/05/ecological-society-of-america-announces-2023-fellows/

Gross Receives SEC Award

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Professor Louis Gross was honored with the 2018 SEC Faculty Achievement Award this week.  The award recognizes professors from the 14 Southeastern Conference schools who have outstanding records in teaching and scholarship. Honorees from each university receive an honorarium and become their university’s nominee for SEC Professor of the Year, to be awarded later this spring.

The full press release can be viewed at news.utk.edu.

 

Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity

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UT is home to a new Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity (DySoC), led by  Director Sergey Gavrilets.  Other EEB faculty involved in the center include Nina Fefferman and Lou Gross.

“The goal of the Center is to promote connections and collaborations between different researchers focusing on various aspects and levels of human social behavior. We use theoretical and empirical methods and work at the interface of mathematical, biological, social, and computational sciences. Our topics of interest include cooperation, conflict, cultural evolution and dynamics, mass behavior and psychology, human origins, emergence and evolution of human societies, social norms, and societal resilience and (in) stability to various shocks. We are interested in combining system thinking, modeling tools, and big data to develop testable predictions and practical agendas.”

Teaching Resource Development Award for Poppenwimmer

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Tyler Poppenwimer (Gross & Bailey Labs) won an award to develop online teaching resources to enhance the teaching of Math 152 in spring 2018.

The award, offered by UT’s Office of Information Technology, is open to Graduate Teaching Associates (GTA). The grant is awarded for the enhancement of a course by utilizing OIT-supported technologies and innovative instructional strategies in the redesign of a course or course component to be delivered via the web.

More information about the grant can be found at https://oit.utk.edu/instructional/gtaoit/gtaoit-call/.

 

 

Gross Named Fellow of Society for Mathematical Biology

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Louis GrossA distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT), Gross is also the founding and current director of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) and director of UT’s Institute for Environmental Modeling. His research focuses on computational and mathematical ecology, with applications to plant ecology, conservation biology, natural resource management, and landscape ecology.

Read more at Tennessee Today or the NIMBioS Website

DoD Fellowship for Scott

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Shelby Scott (Gross Lab) has been awarded a three-year 2017 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship!  The NDSEG Fellowship is sponsored and funded by the Department of Defense (DoD). NDSEG selections are made by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, and the Army Research Office. The American Society for Engineering Education administers the NDSEG Fellowship.

Congratulations, Shelby!

 

Window into the Past

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Thirty years ago, Lou Gross composed a history of the Graduate Program in Ecology.  He has now compiled a website of the data he collected.

Some say UT’s Graduate Program in Ecology was the first PhD-granting program in ecology in the US. The program admitted its first students in 1969 with the first MS graduate in 1971 and PhD graduate in 1972.  It formally became part of EEB in 1995.

Lou recruited those involved in establishing the program to be interviewed by WUOT staff, and several interviews were aired on WUOT’s Segue program.  The recordings are downloadable from this page, including

  • Jim Tanner (of “Ghost Bird” fame), the first interim director of the program;
  • Frank McCormick, the first director of the program;
  • Stan Auerbach, an Environmental Sciences Division Director at ORNL;
  • Mike Pelton;
  • Henry Fribourg.

You may find their various comments about the state of ecology at the time interesting. Lou hopes to add more oral history to the webpage, from other people who were involved in getting EEB started.

Lou Gross to Lead NSF Biology Ideas Lab

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Three five-day National Science Foundation Ideas Labs —one for biology, one for engineering, and one for geosciences—are being held this month through April 4 in the Washington, D.C., area. Each lab involves participants from various disciplines and backgrounds, as well as prospective employers and representatives of scientific and professional societies. The goals of the labs are to incubate innovative approaches to improve undergraduate STEM education and produce research agendas that address workforce development needs.

Louis Gross, director of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at UT, will serve as director of the Biology Ideas Lab, to be held March 30 to April 4 in Leesburg, Virginia.

Read the full Tennessee Today article.

NIMBioS Renewal

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $18.6 million to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) to continue its interdisciplinary efforts in developing new mathematical approaches to problems across biology, from the level of the genome to individuals to entire ecosystems.  EEB’s Lou Gross has been the director of NIMBioS since its inception in September 2008.