Congratulations to Bianca for completing all requirements for her PhD yesterday! Bianca's dissertation was a pleasure to read and her presentation was full of stunning visuals. The work is going to change the way people think about the microbiome soon. After this, Bianca will start a prestigious NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Vanessa Ezenwa's lab at Yale!

I am very pleased and honored to know that the lab will be funded by an NSF CAREER Award (DEB-2046797). The award will support ongoing collaborations with Yellowstone National Park for the next five years! During this time we will use dietary DNA metabarcoding to analyze the diets and microbiomes of migratory large mammals and connect this information with what we learn from ecological field experiments to better understand plant-herbivore interactions in this amazing ecosystem. We are excited to support many, many students and early career researchers in the classroom, laboratory, and at Yellowstone in ways that foster growth and improve representation in the field. This award complements and extends what we hope to accomplish through our ongoing NSF EPCSCoR (OIA-2033823) award and increases our current level of NSF support to four active awards.

I will post information about the first new opportunities to join the lab and work on projects like this one over the course of this summer.

We are fortunate once again to have had an opportunity to work with some AMAZING researchers who are now graduating. 

Congratulations to Amanda Lyons '20 Honors '21 MSc for completing her 5th year Master's degree! Amanda has been leading the northeastern terrapin genetics project in our lab for the past few years. Amanda's Honors thesis included some really insightful RADseq data obtained in collaboration with a whole host of governmental, non-profit, and academic partners. We expect the output to have a significant impact on conservation strategies and priorities for the turtle in the region.

Congratulations to Camille Tulloss '21 for earning Honors and a Senior Biology Prize for her graduation! Camille's thesis focused on the microbiomes of wild bison migrating across Yellowstone National Park. The work was a scientific and visual masterpiece, that seamlessly melded Camille's passion for research, scientific education, and illustration. We look forward to collaborating with Camille on this topic for years to come. 

A quick note about our posts: Our lab's response to the pandemic was to focus in on supporting ourselves and one another. As a result, I have not been very good about publicly posting these sorts of milestones and accomplishments for the amazing people in the lab this year. The situation is still fluid, both locally and globally, but I aspire to post more regular updates going forward. 

The lab has much to celebrate as we close out another semester, even despite the disruptions of COVID-19.

• Congratulations to Patrick Freeman for earning a Masters based on a thesis comparing ecological hypotheses about the distributions of plants and large herbivores in Kenya!
• Congratulations to incoming Voss postdoc Colin Donihue for publishing several high-impact papers, including one featured on the cover of PNAS (generating a buzz in the NY Times and elsewhere) and one in Nature Ecology and Evolution!
• Congratulations to Courtney Reed for winning a grant from the American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration & Field Research!
• Congratulations to seniors graduating with amazing research accomplishments: Amanda Lyons (Honors), Catherine Porter, and Violet Sackett!
• Congratulations to Amanda Lyons '20 for admission into Brown's 5th year Masters program to conduct research on diamondback terrapins in collaboration with governmental and non-profit partners, and with generous support from a Diamondback Terrapin Working Group Grant!
• Congratulations to Cate Porter '20 for admission into the University of Virginia's Environmental Science graduate program!
• Congratulations to Jen Guyton (Princeton PhD) for earning the cover of Nature Ecology and Evolution based on our work to understand and restore the ecosystems of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique!
• Congratulations to Ashley Bang '19 on her upcoming position in Lian Pin Koh's lab at the National University of Singapore!

Congratulations to Bianca Brown for a 2020 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship Honorable Mention!
Congratulations to Courtney Reed for a 2020 Animal Behavior Society Student Research Grant!

Chrishen Gomez is the recipient of a prestigious 2019 Merdeka Award Grant from Malaysia, which was established “to reward citizens and organizations who have made outstanding contributions in their respective fields to the people of Malaysia.” 

Chrishen joins the lab for three months as a Visiting Research Associate affiliated with EEB. During his visit, Chrishen will collaborate on DNA-based analyses of animal diets and genetics. Chrishen aims to apply these approaches and his affiliation with the Bornean Carnivore Program to establish a conservation genetics research program that focuses on the Sunda Clouded Leopard in Malaysia.

Check out Chrishen's Merdeka Award acceptance speech to learn about his amazing research and conservation efforts in Borneo!

Ashley Bang has been selected as the 2019 recipient of the Susan Pilch Friedman '77, P'08 Excellence Award in Women's Leadership in recognition of her leadership and support of women in multiple student organizations at Brown University. Ashley will be recognized at Brown's Women's Leadership Council in May. Congratulations to Ashley on all of her accomplishments and her upcoming graduation!