Employee of the Month awarded to Katie Nus!

Congratulations to Katie Nus, Greenhouse Manager in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who was recently awarded the February 2012 Employee of the Month.  Katie’s work is important because she is in charge of greenhouses that contain an extremely diverse collection of plants that differ in their light, water, soil and other requirements. Faculty success in obtaining grants and publishing research results as well as student progress toward obtaining degrees depend on the successful cultivation of experimental plants in the greenhouse. Katie works closely with faculty and students to meet the diverse requirements of the many different plants used in the research and teaching missions of EEB. Dr. Dan Rockhill, a distinguished professor in Architecture recently sought Katie’s advice on his project to create a 34 foot long by 12 foot tall wall of ferns at the Center for Design Research.  He states:  “I honestly say that we would never have been so bold as to include a tall wall of ferns in our design if I had not found Katie!  I needed someone who cares and is passionate about what they do and I found that in Katie.”

John Kelly Awarded NIH Four Year Research Grant

John Kelly has been awarded a grant for about $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund four years of research that uses the Monkey Flower (Mimulus) model system to (1) study the traits of organisms related to fitness, (2) consider how selection influences the maintenance of genetic variation in ecologically important characteristics, and (3) develops a novel procedure for mapping quantitative trait loci in populations. The NIH funding signals that this research on plants will explore very basic considerations of how adaptive evolution is related to mutation and selection, which are questions that are applicable across organisms.

Jennifer Gleason named National Academies Education Fellow

Congratulations to Jennifer Gleason who has been named as a National Academies Education Fellow in the Life Science.  The honor is bestowed by virtue of being selected to and enthusiastic participation in the 2011 National Academies Northstar Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology held at the University of Minnesota in June 2011.  Teams from 12 research universities from across the U.S. assembled to focus on enhancing undergraduate education, with themes of active learning, assessment, and diversity as the primary foci.

Chaboo and Short Awarded NSF Digitization Grants

Congratulations to Caroline Chaboo and Andrew Short, Assistant Professors in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology were awarded two out of four National Science Foundation Digitization Grants aimed to bring “dark data” to the light. Dr. Chaboo’s award involved “Plants, Herbivores and Parasitoids: A Model System for the Study of Tri-Trophic Associations.”  Dr. Short’s award involved “InvertNet—An Integrative Platform for Research on Environmental Change, Species Discovery and Identification.”  (see:  http://biodiversity.ku.edu/newsroom/grant-help-fund-digitization-collections)

Dr. Chaboo recently was interviewed and a video was produced by the Lawrence Journal World regarding the digitization project s (see video: http://www2.ljworld.com/videos/2011/sep/19/35007. 

Brown awarded U.S. Forest Service grant

Congratulations to Rafe Brown and San Francisco State University colleague, Vance Vredenburg who recently received funding for a United States Forest Service, Wildlife Without Borders - Amphibians in Decline proposal entitled, Can we prevent a chytridiomycosis epidemic in the Philippines? The funding will support the PIs during the collection of preliminary data for submission of a major NSF Ecology of Infectious Disease Program grant proposal in the coming year.

Hileman receives "Mentor of the Year" award

Congratulations to Lena Hileman who recently received the "Mentor of the Year" award from the Office of Diversity in Science Training at the University of Kansas. The award is given annually to an outstanding mentor who has been nominated by one or more of their students. Dr. Hileman was chosen based on her record of mentoring students in The Diversity of Science Training programs.

Billings receives NSF grant to fund new research facility

An interdisciplinary team of 12 KU collaborators has received a $330,000 award from the National Science Foundation to develop greenhouse-based research capabilities and to construct associated support facilities at the University of Kansas Field Station, north of Lawrence. The team is led by Sharon Billings, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and associate scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey. The multi-user research and teaching facility will include: *a 2,160-sq-ft greenhouse used for controlled-environment experiments *a 432-sq-ft, all season greenhouse *a 1,200-sq-ft multi-purpose building *a fenced research garden near the structures The larger greenhouse will permit terrestrial and aquatic studies to be conducted in a more controlled fashion than is possible in the field, while enabling more natural conditions than laboratory studies permit.

Ward to participate in first Arab-American Frontiers Symposium

Congratulations to Joy Ward who has been invited to participate in the first Arab-American Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine symposium (October, 2011) in Kuwait. The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) will host the meeting and it is the first time the U. S. National Academies and KISR are bringing together some of the best young scientists, engineers, and medical professionals from the United States and the countries of the Arab League.

Chaboo Featured Scientist

Congratulations to Caroline Chaboo who has been selected by the Ad Astra Kansas Initiative, a group of citizens and educators that promotes Kansas' scientific profile in schools, as one of their 150 Kansas scientist (past and present) to promote on science "trading cards" that can be downloaded from the Ad Astra Kansas Initiative website: www.adastra-ks.org. Each month new cards will be added to the collection. The cards are geared towards grades 5 on up.

Bodbyl and Siler Papers in Evolution

EEB doctoral candidates Sarah Bodbyl-Roels and Cameron Siler have published papers in the September issue of Evolution. Sarah's paper, "Rapid evolution caused by pollinator loss in Mimulus guttatus", is co-authored by her faculty mentor, John K. Kelly. Cameron's paper, "Evidence for repeated acquisition and loss of complex body-form characters in an insular clade of southeast Asian semi-fossorial skinks", is co-authored by Rafe Brown, chair of Cameron's dissertation committee.

Schwendemann Paper in PNAS

Congratulations to Andrew Schwendemann for his paper that just appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-authored with Anne-Laure Decombeix, Thomas Taylor, Edith Taylor, and Michael Krings, and titled, "Morphological and functional stasis in mycorrhizal root nodules as exhibited by a Triassic conifer." Andrew collected the fossils that led to this discovery while in Antarctica last December and January. The root nodules that he describes contain fungi that form a symbiotic association with the plant -- in modern coniferous plants, the fungus delivers critical nutrients to the plant and receives a carbon reward in the mutualistic partnership. The fact that these 240 million year old fossils contain evidence of such an association pushes back the origin of the symbiosis by 100 million years!

 

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