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NSF Graduate Fellowships – Updated (again)

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Five Six current or incoming EEB students were awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships or honorable mentions:

Awards:

Honorable mentions:
Update: Also note that Kelly Rooker, a graduate student in math who is in EEB faculty member Sergey Gavrilets‘ lab, was also awarded an NSF fellowship.

Update 2: Angela Chuang has decided to enter EEB in the fall; numbers have been updated to reflect this.

In the areas of ecology and systematics, EEB tied for 12th 9th place out of all universities in awards and honorable mentions (note that UTK EEB is the only department broken out; all other numbers were summed across all departments in other universities). In these areas EEB had more students honored than Harvard, Duke, Stanford, Yale, and many other universities with strong equivalent departments. Below is a table of EEB and all other institutions with any awards or honorable mentions ecology or systematics. Across all areas and departments, UTK got 12 awards and honorable mentions in total.

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 &amp 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”.

Multiple EEB members receive Chancellor’s Awards

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The UT Chancellor’s Office gives annual awards to recognize “extraordinary achievements” for faculty, staff, students, and other members of the EEB community. EEB-associated members received a disproportionate number of awards, including half of the awards for community service:
Gary McCracken — Alexander Prize, recognizing superior teaching and distinguished scholarship
Rosie Gillespie, UT PhD 1986 (advisor Susan Riechert), won the Notable UT Woman award, which this year was given to an alumna
Ken McFarland — an award for Extraordinary Community Service, due to his commitment to the Wildflower Pilgrimage
PhD student Jess Welch — an award  for Extraordinary Community Service
GREBE (graduate student organization, EEB) — an award for Extraordinary Community Service
Hannah Long was named a Top Collegiate Scholar
And also Shanna Pendergast, who recently joined Biology as an advisor, won an award for excellence in undergraduate advising

Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage April 23-27

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The 63rd annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage is April 23 – 37. It is “an annual five-day event in Great Smoky Mountains National Park consisting of a variety of wildflower, fauna, and natural history walks, motorcades, photographic tours, art classes, and indoor seminars. Most programs are outdoors in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, while indoor offerings are held in various venues throughout Gatlinburg, TN” (from its website). It includes numerous offerings by EEB people, including a mushroom walk with EEB undergrad (and incoming Matheny lab graduate student) Christine Braaten, a talk and ant hike with faculty member Nate Sanders, and a nighttime bat walk by McCracken lab members. Gene Wofford, director of the UT Herbarium and emeritus EEB faculty member, is one of the organizers of the pilgrimage.

Grants on effects of invasion on bats

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EEB PhD student Jessica Welch, a grad student with Gary McCracken and Dan Simberloff, recently received grants to study how invasive species affect a bat. From her abstract:

Aguiguan, a small island in the Northern Mariana Islands, is home to the only known population of the Emballonura semicaudata rotensis, a subspecies of Pacific sheath-tailed bat. Immediate research is necessary to determine an appropriate approach to its conservation. Two ubiquitous invaders, feral goats and lantana shrub have dense populations on Aguiguan. It is unknown whether these invasive species affect the Pacific sheath-tailed bat.


The grants were funded by Sigma Xi and Bat Conservation International. Jess was also inducted into Sigma Xi as an associate member.

R-Encyclopedia of Life interface

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Research assistant professor Barb Banbury and assistant professor Brian O’Meara recently received funding from the Encyclopedia of Life for creating an R interface to parse information from that site. This can be used to identify phylogenetic trends in amount of content for various groups, highlight taxonomic controversies, and in general make this data far more accessible for researchers. All their code is open source and is being developed in public. More information is available here. The figure above shows coverage of various plant species in different databases on a phylogeny of those plants (Asparagales); blue indicates better coverage.

EEB undergrad wins in EUReCA competition

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EEB undergrad Devin Jones won first place in the EUReCA undergraduate research symposium, Ecology, Evolution, and Water Quality category, at UT. Devin’s poster was on “Fall Migration of Corn and Rice Strains of Spodoptera fruigperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in Southwest Texas”. She conceived of the project and performed all the field and lab work as well as the analyses. She was mentored by EEB Dept. Head Gary McCracken and EEB PhD student Jennifer Krauel.