The GCC WEEKLY | February 14 2023 | |
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Linsey Marr Named to National Academy of Engineering
Linsey Marr, the Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for her advancement of fundamental knowledge of transport, removal, and mitigation of airborne pathogenic viruses.
While Marr’s research on airborne virus transmission began in 2009, her work became the center of attention in 2020 with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the global health crisis, the two most urgent questions were “How is the coronavirus transmitted?” and “What can we do to protect ourselves?” Marr was one of about a dozen people in the world prepared to answer these questions correctly.
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Thursday, February 16
8:00 AM ET
Derring Hall Room 4069
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IGC Fellow David Millican's PhD Defense Seminar - Thursday, February 16
Please join us in supporting IGC Fellow David Millican for his Ph.D. defense seminar presentation this Thursday. David is a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Biological Sciences, advised by GCC affiliate Dr. Jeff Walters. Dave’s unique research focuses on Namibia’s wildlife and the associations of local communities with it.
His seminar is titled "Trees, Birds, and People: Resource Use and Interspecific Interactions in a Namibian Cavity-Nesting Guild"
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NSF Program Solicitation for Global Centers
The Global Centers program is an NSF-led effort, implemented in partnership with like-minded international funders, to encourage and support large-scale collaborative research on use-inspired themes in climate change and clean energy.
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NFS Accelerating Research TranslationProgram
The U.S. National Science Foundation announced the Accelerating Research Translation, or ART, program, a new $60 million investment led by NSF's Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships.
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Leandro Castello
Fish and Wildlife Conservation
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Leandro Castello studies the ecology and conservation of fish and fisheries in relation to global change processes. His research is issue-driven and it utilizes a broad array of methodologies to understand and solve fishery problems. Most of his research has been on Arapaima spp., one of the largest and most overexploited fishes of the Amazon Basin.
Dr. Castello’s research on arapaima has focused on the migration, reproduction, abundance, and population dynamics, as well as on the skills and knowledge of arapaima fishers. These studies have led to the development of a successful model of community-based management, where fishers themselves assess arapaima populations to determine fishing quotas.
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Relief Effort for Turkey
Turkey was recently hit by two earthquakes of 7.5+ magnitude on Feb. 6th. In response to this disaster, the Turkish Student Association, and the VT community has coordinated a collection drive for urgent items to help those displaced in Turkey. These items will be transported to the DC Embassy for flight to Turkey to get the resources in the places where they are needed most. Let's unite in ut prosim.
Collection Dates: February 8 - February 17
Collection Sites:
Graduate Life Center (Main Lobby)
ACEC at Squires Student Center (Room 140)
Fralin Life Sciences Institute (Steger Hall)
Northern Virginia Center (Room 495)
Items Needed:
New or gently used winter clothes for adults and children (coats, gloves, socks, boots, sweaters etc.), Blankets, Sleeping Bags, Thermos Bottles, Flashlight, Powerbank, Diapers, Hygiene Products
Questions/concerns: Please email Isil Anakok
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Creating a Website with VT Domains
This workshop will cover the basics of creating website with VT Domains. VT Domains gives faculty, staff, and students on campus web space to experiment with technology and build websites for classes, research, portfolios, and more. In this workshop we will cover what VT Domains is, how to create an account, and getting started with your site.
Tuesday, February 21
1:30 - 3:30 PM ET
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Unearthing the Impact of Moisture on Soil Carbon Processes
Researchers from across Virginia Tech, in collaboration with scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, the National Science Foundation’s National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), and other universities, are offering a new perspective on the dynamics that drive soil carbon cycles.
“We’re demonstrating, at the molecular level, that there is a big split in how carbon in soil is cycled between humid and arid soil systems,” said Brian Strahm, GCC affaliate and a primary investigator on the grant that funded this research. “This is useful in allowing us to imagine two fundamentally different models of how carbon is concentrated and moves within soil.”
These findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are at odds with the group’s initial expectation about what factors make soil efficient at sequestering carbon.
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GCC Affiliate Featured in VTX Video: "How harmful are the microplastics in our waterways?"
As car tires deteriorate, they leave behind tiny particles that make their way into our waterways, along with other emerging contaminates. GCC faculty affiliate, Austin Gray, along with his graduate and undergraduate students, are researching the effects of these microplastics.
The Gray Lab research priorities are focused on addressing questions related to environmental toxicology, primarily using physiological and ecological approaches to examine the impacts of legacy and emerging contaminants (PAHs, POPs, microplastics, nanoplastics, and pharmaceuticals) from anthropogenic influence and assessing their risk to a variety of freshwater and marine organisms.
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IGC Fellows Participate in Global Workshop to Identify & Publish "Priorities for Synthesis Research in Ecology and Environmental Science"
Interfaces of Global Change Fellows Stephen Plont and Brendan Shea are co-authors of a new article in the journal Ecosphere characterizing "Priorities for Synthesis Research in Ecology and Environment Science". The report, published January 11, 2023, is the result of a 2021 virtual workshop through the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS) that brought together over 120 scientists from across the globe to brainstorm and produce a guide for collaborative projects looking to address pressing questions around global change over the next decade.
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Do you have an opportunity or announcement you'd like to share with the GCC community? Send us an email!
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