The award is designed to support outstanding master’s and doctoral students pursuing academic, professional development or training enrichment opportunities during Summer 2013. Holly is using the award to participate in the Complex Systems Summer School at Santa Fe Institute.

During her time as a Guggenheim Fellow, Jessica plans to work on two closely related efforts: (1) the development of microbial community assembly theory for urban environments and (2) the production of a graphic novel about the built environment microbiome, titled Cities Unseen.

Read the full story in UO News here

Research professors at the university say the field has received less and less funding over the years. While they understand the budget strain everyone’s under, they hope the president’s testimony could at least help keep the status quo.

President Michael Gottfredson says it’s important for legislators to be reminded of what these universities provide for not only the students but the community as a whole.

Last year, in terms of non-resident tuition and the research grants and contracts generated by faculty, half a billion dollars were spent in the Eugene area alone.

“Thinking about the research university broadly, what this university does and all great other universities do, has a mission to provide the highest educational opportunities to the citizens of the state and broad access to great educational opportunities,” Gottfredson said.

Gottfredson says the investment in these institutions is truly an investment in everyone’s future.

Professors and students hope that legislators will recognize the impact these basic programs have on advancement of our society and that they continue to support the work being done.

See the Phillip’s lab featured on KEZI news here

Michelle Wood received the 2013 Distinguished Alumnus Award from Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi during TAMUCC’s Homecoming celebration on Feb. 9. Michelle began studying phytoplankton as an undergraduate at the college when it was the University of Corpus Christi, a private institution. During meetings with the university’s faculty at Harte Research Institute, a premier center for coastal systems science, she discovered her four-year study of seasonal cycles of plankton abundance in Matagorda Bay during the 1970s may be a valuable basis for collaborative work on climate change on the Texas Gulf coast.

Wednesday, March 20
3:15 Christine O’Connor (Streisfeld lab)
3:30 Dan Thomas (Carroll lab)
3:45 Felipe Campos-Cerda (Guillemin lab)

Thursday, March 21
2:00 Allison Fuiten  (Phillips lab)
2:15 Kyle Meyer   (Bohannan lab)
2:30 Andrew Nishida  (Conery lab)
2:45 Rudy Borowczak  (Cresko lab)

Brendan Bohannan and an international team of microbiologists have revealed a new concern about deforestation in the Amazon rainforest — a troubling net loss in the diversity among the microbial organisms responsible for a functioning ecosystem.  See feature in Around the O.

The new research in the Amazon Rainforest was recently published in PNAS  (read the original study) and has since been the subject of a podcast by EarthSky.  http://earthsky.org/science-wire/amazons-diversity-loss-shows-up-in-the-soil   In addition, Science Magazine has just published a news article on Bohannan’s PNAS paper (see ECOLOGY: Microbial Conversion).

Monday, December 3 – 327 Pacific

12:30 – 2:30

12:30 PM – Rudy Borowczak

12:45 PM – Felipe Campos-Cerda

1:00 PM – Allison Fuiten

~ break ~

1:30 PM – Kyle Meyer

1:45 PM – Andrew Nishida

2:00 PM – Christine O’Connor

2:15 PM – Dan Thomas

“Research in the Roy Lab here at the University of Oregon’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution has recently become the subject of a documentary film!

British filmmaker/nature photographer Jacky Poon joined the Roy lab this past winter at Reserva Los Cedros, high in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador, to document their research and investigate threats to this hotspot of biodiversity. Jacky, a BA (Hons) Marine and Natural History Photography graduate from University College Falmouth, in the United Kingdom, became the first ever to catch on film a newly discovered method of pollination used by Ecuadorian Dracula orchids, one of the subjects of the Roy Lab’s work in Ecuador.

He will travel to the University of Oregon to be present for the world premier of his film, The Cloud Forest Project.

The University of Oregon screening of the film will be on Tuesday October 16 at 7:30 pm in 100 Willamette Hall.

The film illustrates the work of the Roy lab on the mushroom-mimicking Dracula orchids and forest fungi in Ecuador. Even more importantly, it showcases the biodversity of the Los Cedros Reserve and the threats it is facing from illegal logging, settlement, and mining. The film is just over an hour long and will be filled with spectacular footage ranging from birds to monkeys to orchids to interviews with villagers who have been threatened by mining operators.

Two different trailers for the film are available here:
Short: http://youtu.be/FDTOztmTWsw [1]
Long: http://youtu.be/KkYVb_J6jAs [2]

The screening is sponsored by: The Eugene Natural HIstory Society, Environmental Studies, The Biology Department, The Institute of Ecology and Evolution, and University College Falmouth.
Other screens are scheduled at the University of Maryland (Oct. 25th), and the Radical Mycology Convergence (Oct. 20th), with more to follow.”

AY 2012-13 begins this week with seven new members of IE² -

Welcome to our new students:

Rudy, Felipe, Allison, Kyle, Andrew, Christine & Dan!

2012_IE2_Students