Tidbits

UCMP student awards
In order to further support the research of its graduate students, UCMP is pleased to announce that Nick Pyenson is the 2007 recipient of the Remington Kellogg Award, and Lorraine Casazza and May De Vries will jointly share the Palmer Award. In addition, UCMP awarded four additional graduate student research awards this year. These went to Katie Brakora, Jenny McGuire, Becky Williams, and Randy Irmis. Congratulations to all!

Welcome new students
To the Barnosky Lab:
Emily Lindsey comes to us from Brown University via Oregon and plans to develop projects on Quaternary paleoecology in South America.

To the Lindberg Lab:
Joey Pakes joins us from Harvard University and will be working on marine invertebrates. Joey is co-sponsored with Roy Caldwell.

Alexei Rivera did his undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and earned a Masters in Science at the University of Bristol, UK. Alexei is interested in the Cambrian Explosion and the events leading up to it. Alexei is co-sponsored with Jim Valentine.

Congratulations are due!
This was the summer of weddings for UCMP graduate students! We send our congratulations to:
Erin Meyer on her marriage to Michael Beetham, who received his Masters in Music at the University of Washington.

Liz Perotti on her marriage to Jon Fram, who works at the Marine Science Institute at UCSB as a post-doc.

Jann Vendetti on her marriage to Gene Kwon, who works at REI.

And congratulations also to Dave Haasl and his wife, Elaine, on the birth of their new son Michael, born July 9th and weighing in at seven pounds.

Congratulations also to
Jann Vendetti, who received the following grant awards this past spring: Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research (Berkeley Chapter), Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research (National), Geological Society of America Travel Grant (for presentation of a paper at the annual meeting of the GSA Cordilleran Section in May), and UNITAS Malacologia Travel Grant (international) to present a paper at the 2007 World Congress of Malacology in Antwerp, Belgium, in July.

Erin Meyer, who received a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research (Berkeley Chapter) and the 2007 Constance E. Boone Award of the Houston Conchology Society.

Nick Pyenson, who received a summer research fellowship from the NSF East Asia Summer Institutes Program, which sponsors graduate student research in Pacific Rim countries. New Zealand was just added to the list of host countries this year, and Nick was among 11 other students in the first group to go to New Zealand, who were all co-sponsored by the Royal Society of New Zealand (see his Summer Adventures, page 7). Nick was also awarded an AMNH Lerner-Gray grant for his field work in the Pisco Basin of Peru.

UCMP continues support for summer short course
Once again, UCMP offered support for the extremely popular Geometric Morphometrics Summer Short Course. Graduate student, Jenny McGuire helped to organized the course which she described as extremely successful. "We had 18 participants, all of whom gained a great deal of experience in this powerful technique for shape analysis. Thanks so much to UCMP for helping to fund the course!" Here's what a few of the participants had to say:

"The course is essential. After the first day, the idea that I could have learned how to use these methods based on the published literature and web resources completely disappeared. There are unfortunately very few of these courses run throughout the country, which makes the Berkeley course all the more valuable."
—Justin Adams, Visiting Professor, Grand Valley State University

"I did not have any experience in morphometric analyses before and now I feel like I can start using them in my research."
—Emily Rubridge, Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM)/Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), UC Berkeley

News from recent grads
Yvonne Valles has accepted a postdoc position in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.

Jacqueline Moustakas stays with us as a Postdoc in Leslea Hlusko's Lab.

Matt Wedel is now a lecturer at the School of Natural Sciences and the Writing Program at UC Merced.

Drew Lee is now an Anatomical Sciences Instructor/Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dept. of Biomedical Sciences (College of Osteopathic Medicine) at Ohio University.

Congratulations to all!

News from "older" alums
Amy Lesen just finished her fourth year as Assistant Professor of Biology at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and received a promotion to Associate Professor. While doing some work with colleagues in New Orleans, Amy received a tenure track job offer at Dillard University, a small Historically Black College/University (HBCU). In July, she moved to New Orleans and is starting as Assistant Professor in the Division of Natural Sciences and Public Health this fall. Amy will be working with the Center for Bioenvironmental Research which is affiliated with Tulane, on sustainable redevelopment of New Orleans and the melding of ecology and culture in the city. Amy is also involved in a research project with Roger Anderson and Andrew Juhl at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, doing work on the microbial ecology of the Hudson River.

And congratulations to Brian Simison on his appointment to the newly-created position of Assistant Curator of Comparative Genomics at the California Academy of Sciences where he will head the Center for Comparative Genomics.

Congratulations also to one of our elder statesmen, Nestor John Sander (aka Sandy). First a little background: Sandy graduated from Cal with a B.A. in paleontology in 1936 and completed his Masters in 1938. He then joined Standard Oil Company of California and was sent to Saudi Arabia the same year. There he was assigned to map the subsurface contours of a major anticlinal fold that is now the largest oil field in the world, Ghawar. This more than qualified him for a recent interview in his home for an ABC television special [skip straight to the conversation with Sandy in Part 2 at the 15:42 minute mark] on the importance of crude oil. At a very young 93, Sandy spends a great deal of time taking advantage of new technology. As a result, for all of you World War II history buffs, his two short slide shows about the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc in 1944 shown on You Tube are well worth a visit. Just enter "rednasrotsen" (Nestor Sander backward) in the You Tube search box.