RAISING THE BIOLOGY RESEARCH PROFILE
A number of faculty in Biological Sciences have recently secured prestigious awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other funding agencies to study wide-ranging biological phenomena. DRS. FIERST AND ATKINSON RECEIVE
it is possible to recover these functions
importance to the field of ecology and to
PRESTIGIOUS NSF CAREER AWARDS
and services, thereby promoting more
the stability of wildlife populations. Dr. Gui
The NSF Faculty Early Career Development,
resilient coastal watersheds. As part of a new
Becker has been awarded an NSF grant to
or CAREER, Program is the most prestigious
Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant project, Drs.
study the impacts of rainfall variability on
award in support of early-career faculty at NSF.
Cherry and Mortazavi will evaluate ecosystem
wildlife disease transmission. The project
Recipients are recognized as being individuals
structure and function in habitat restoration
is global in scope, with field sites in three
with the potential to serve as academic role
and creation projects of different ages. This
megadiverse tropical regions: Brazil, Peru,
models in research and education and to lead
project will provide important baseline
and Cameroon. By advancing disease
advances in the mission of their department
information about restoration activities, while
transmission theory for diverse species
or organization. With this award, Dr. Fierst
also assessing the structural and functional
assemblages, this research will provide novel
and her team will develop new bioinformatic
outcomes of projects that used different
insights into community-level impacts
tools to detect horizontal gene transfer
approaches for wetland restoration or creation.
of emerging diseases and will ultimately
using nematode worms as a model system.
DRS. ATKINSON, BENSTEAD AND JONES
As part of the award, Dr. Fierst will train undergraduate students in genomics and bioinformatics through an immersive summer research experience at UA. Dr. Atkinson aims to merge the characterization of the functional traits of communities of freshwater mussels, the most globally imperiled faunal group, to critical ecosystem processes such as water filtration and biogeochemical cycling. Further, she plans to integrate the concepts of biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships gained from the research objectives into the instruction of undergraduate courses, K-12 day camps, and after school programs. This research will advance scientific understanding by investigating how community composition and coincidental trait diversity influences biogeochemical cycling over time and space, while also informing conservation of a highly imperiled group and engaging local
AWARDED EPSCOR GRANT TO STUDY INTERMITTENTLY FLOWING STREAMS In Alabama alone, over 40% of our streams and rivers go dry on an annual basis. However, we know very little about what drives this drying, and importantly, how it impacts downstream water quality. Drs. Atkinson, Benstead and Jones have been awarded an NSF EPSCoR RII Track 2 grant to address knowledge gaps on intermittently flowing streams, which control the quantity and quality of water delivered downstream to perennial streams and rivers. This project will create a network of instrumented sites designed to quantify flow intermittency, stream microbiomes, and water quality. Leveraging this network, the team will provide training in collaborative science and interdisciplinary methods through a new
increase our capacity to forecast and respond to disease outbreaks. The project will integrate long-term field surveys and largescale field experiments to test hypotheses on host movement patterns and infection dynamics under different rainfall scenarios. Dr. Becker was also awarded NSF funding for a project focused on investigating the interaction between deforestation and the microbiome as a process to explain patterns of disease emergence across disturbed landscapes, using amphibians of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest as a model system. Both projects will help educate the public through museum exhibits and school lessons and activities with the goals of teaching the concepts of community-level hostpathogen dynamics and narrowing the K-12 science education gap in one of the most underserved areas in the nation.
‘On Ramps to Data Science’ program, which
DR. HARRIS AWARDED GRANT TO
will focus on data generated by microbiome
RESCUE SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY’S
DRS. CHERRY & MORTAZAVI AWARDED
sequencing, environmental sensors, and
FROZEN TISSUE COLLECTION
GRANT TO STUDY RECOVERY OF
Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This
Saint Louis University Museum’s Genetic
RESTORED TIDAL MARSHES
infrastructure and training will support a team
Resources & Collections (GRC) amassed a
Coastal wetland restoration is increasingly
of 18 investigators, including nine early-career
collection of approximately 63,000 catalogued
utilized to offset wetland loss and degradation
scientists spanning five EPSCoR jurisdictions
and vouched specimens or tissues from over
and to recover ecosystem services, making it
(AL, ID, KS, MS, OK) and engage a diverse
6,600 species of freshwater and marine fishes
important to evaluate the relative effectiveness
group of students, including undergraduates.
from all over the world since its beginning
and times to functional equivalence of
DR. GUI BECKER AWARDED TWO
communities.
different restoration strategies. Two critically important services provided by coastal wetlands are carbon storage and nitrogen removal. By restoring or creating wetlands,
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GRANTS TO STUDY WILDLIFE DISEASE IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE Understanding how species cope with disease in an era of global change is of fundamental
in 1983. On May 25, 2017, Macelwane Hall, home to the Museum and GRC, experienced a fire that caused extensive structural, water, and soot damage throughout the building. Following this incident, Saint Louis University
