The GCC WEEKLY | February 28 2023 | |
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IGC Fellows Participate in "Hokie for a Day" Youth Outreach Expo Event
Interfaces of Global Change (IGC) Fellows participated in the Hokie for a Day Expo on February 22, hosted by the VT Center for Educational Networks and Impacts. IGC Graduate Student Organization Officers Prashasti Agarwal, Outreach Chair, and Taylor Fossett, Social Chair, organized the opportunity for IGC Fellows to practice their science communication skills and engage with the community by volunteering at an expo booth. Their exhibit titled "Birding for the Angry-birds!" introduced the audience to birding gear and identification techniques. The exhibit was a huge success and received with enthusiasm and curiosity by the young students. The annual event offers fifth grade students a unique opportunity to experience college life, and includes a discussion of college majors and how to get to college, an expo with hands-on academic experiences from Virginia Tech faculty and students, and more.
Kudos to Prashasti, Camilo, Taylor & Casey!
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Professional Development Workshop: Broader Impacts 101
Many funding agencies now require impacts that extend beyond an academic audience to benefit broader society. The Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI) housed within the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) collaborates with university researchers to develop and evaluate broader impacts plans that are mutually beneficial to researchers and the public. In this session, Associate Director of Broader Impacts Dr. Chelsea Lyles will share processes and support available to Virginia Tech researchers, followed by a panel that will share their experiences with successful collaborations.
Thursday March 9
9:30 - 11:30 AM ET
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Postdoc Opportunity: Metabolic & Behavioral Adaptations To Warming City
Researchers at the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), part of the Universite de Montpellier in France, seek a highly motivated candidate with a strong background in animal metabolism, and ideally with experience in respirometry. The postdoc will take part in a new collaborative project in CEFE (project AdapTit) to study the interacting effects of global warming and urbanization on Great tit (Parus major) behavior and physiology. This question will be addressed using a combination of experimental approaches, mainly in captivity, and long-term monitoring in an urbanization gradient.
Application Deadline Wednesday March 22
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GCC Affiliate Michelle Stocker Shares a Peek into "A Tedious, Time-Consuming Effort to Unearth Prehistoric Life"
Fossils from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and beyond are cleaned and prepared for study at Virginia Tech's Paleontology Prep Lab. "Everything in here is over 200 million years old," says Assistant Professor Michelle Stocker. "Everything that we're digging up is a fossil that no human has ever seen before, in most cases." These fossils not only further our understanding of past life on earth, but they also help us understand the biodiversity that we have today.
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“Divisions in Social Networks and Implications for Inequality and Immobility"
The Virginia Tech College of Science’s J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series will host its first talk of 2023 with Matthew Jackson, the William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Jackson's talk, titled “Divisions in Social Networks and Implications for Inequality and Immobility", is free and open to the public.
“We [will] examine the extent to which the presence of various forms of social capital predict whether children in poor families rise economically,” Jackson said of his topic. “A network measure of connections across economic class lines is highly predictive of economic mobility. We discuss why such economic connectedness should matter as well as corresponding policy implications including algorithmic fairness in job referrals. We then take a deeper look into the determinants of homophily (the lack of connections across groups) and discuss some new observations about patterns of homophily in networks and their consequences.”
Wednesday, March 1
7:30 PM ET
Quillen Family Auditorium in Goodwin Hall
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GCC Affiliate Austin Gray Weighs In on Railroad Transportation Safety Measures
There’s a new push for railroad safety measures - engineering and environmental - in the wake of two recent train derailments, including the one in East Palestine, Ohio. “When we think about having trains transport these chemicals, there’s a lot of concern because all it takes is one accident,” said Austin Gray, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Virginia Tech, who studies environmental toxicology. “Any type of contaminant that goes into the air is going to be transported to other areas - whether downstream or in different proximity.” Gray said the way these determinants spread in one area can go much farther in distance, “meaning that non impacted communities may not be impacted now, but it could be in the future.”
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GCC Seed Grant Supports Big Data Study to Identify Species Vulnerable to Climate Change
Virginia Tech biological sciences postdoctoral researcher Traci DuBose, working with GCC affiliate Meryl Mims, has been measuring the intrinsic sensitivity of species to climate change — a key determinant of extinction vulnerability — in 90 species of anurans, commonly known as frogs and toads. By accessing publicly available data, DuBose and her team evaluated and compared more than 140,000 observations of anurans native to the US, making it the first study of this size and scope. DuBose and her team’s research builds on an initial 2018 GCC faculty seed grant awarded to study species vulnerability. Co-authors on the paper include IGC PhD Fellows Sam Silknetter, Chloe Moore, Grace O'Malley, and recent VT graduate Tess Alexander, who was supported by a GCC Undergraduate Research Award.
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