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Tidbits, September 2013

Congratulations!

To Maya DeVries who was awarded both an NSF Ocean Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and a Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Postdoctoral Fellowship in Marine Biology to work in SIO Professor Jennifer Taylor’s lab (crustacean physiology and ecology). Jennifer was a postdoc with Sheila Patek when Sheila was still in IB and a curator at the UCMP, so a UCMP connection.

To UCMP Curatorial Associate Lynn Ingram (Associate Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences) on the publication of her new book (August 2013) with co-author Frances Malamud-Roam: The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow.

To the Looy Lab, whose members presented six talks and two posters, and for winning five awards at the 2013 Botanical Society of America meeting in New Orleans. Robert Stevenson won the Mosely Award, given to the best student paper presented in either the Paleobotanical or Developmental and Structural sessions, that advances our understanding of plant structure in an evolutionary context. Dori Contreras received the Cookson Paleobotanical Award for delivering the best student paper in paleobotany or palynology at the annual meeting. Stephanie Ranks won the Cheadle Student Travel Award for explaining what Vernon Cheadle’s most important contributions were to botany and for describing the significance of her own research. Meriel Melendrez and Jeff Benca both received Triarch Botanical Images Student Travel Awards; second and third place, respectively.

To Rosemary Romero for three recent awards: an Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) Fellowship for the 2013–2014 academic year, a Hannah T. Croasdale Fellowship from the Phycological Society of America to pay room and board at while attending summer courses, and the 2013 CenCal California Diving & Aquatic Studies Scholarship.

To Susumu Tomiya, who completed his Ph.D. on “Ecological Aspects of the Diversity Dynamics of North American Fossil Mammals,” and has moved on to a postdoctoral position at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History.

Announcing our student awards!

UCMP is fortunate to have received donations in the form of an endowment from individuals dedicated to the support of graduate training and research, especially field work. Each year we use the earnings from these endowments to make research awards to our graduate students, and we are proud to announce this year’s recipients of the Welles and Palmer awards and offer them congratulations.

— From the Doris O. and Samuel P. Welles Fund:
Elizabeth Ferrer for travel to museums in Australia to photograph fossil and extant varanid specimens for geometric morphometrics analysis.

— From the Dorothy K. Palmer Fund:
Lucy Chang for travel to institutions in the Denver, Colorado, area and collect data for use in characterizing ammonite morphology in the Western Interior Seaway. Project goals include tracking morphological changes exhibited by ammonite fauna in epeiric sea environments. Lucy also received support from the William B.N. Berry Memorial Research Fund.

Jenna Judge for instrument deployment and sampling of specialized fauna and substrate materials associated with deep-sea woodfall substrates. Molecular phylogenetic analysis of the materials sampled is expected to provide insight on symbiotic relationships.

Welcome new students!

Brett Archuleta joins the Finnegan Lab and comes to us from Westminster College in Utah; he plans to focus on research in benthic foraminifera.

Emily Orzechowski will also be joining the Finnegan Lab. She completed her undergraduate degree at the College of William & Mary and plans to work on Plio-Pleistocene molluscan fauna of the west coast of North America.

Jun Lim completed his Masters degree at Imperial College, London, and will join the Marshall Lab.

Other news

Sarah Werning from the Padian Lab has joined the Turner Lab at Stony Brook University as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow. She plans to study the evolution of crocodylian growth, histology, and physiology using bone tissue analysis.