Grad News Forum

Congratulations to Julia Bradley-Cook for being awarded an honorable mention for the 2013 American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) Emerging Public Policy Leadership Award!

Each year, AIBS recognizes graduate students in the biological sciences who have demonstrated an interest in and ability to contribute to science and public policy. This year competition for the award was especially fierce; AIBS awarded two students the top prize, in addition to recognizing three students, including Bradley-Cook, with honorable mentions.

Bradley-Cook is a fourth-year PhD student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology working with Dr. Ross Virginia on carbon dynamics in Greenland soils. Bradley-Cook has been interested in the intersection of science and policy ever since an undergraduate course got her thinking about the role of science in resource management. Two years working for sustainable development NGOs in Namibia after college confirmed her interest and exposed her to the challenges of bringing science and policy together.

Since coming to Dartmouth, Bradley-Cook has continued her commitment to policy while working to complete her biology degree. Her research addresses the critical issue of how much carbon currently locked in arctic permafrost will be released as the climate warms. As Dr. Virginia says, “Julia’s work connects basic science to the information needs of the policy world. No small task, and essential work.”

As president of the Graduate Student Council, Bradley-Cook works closely with the Dartmouth administration to advocate for graduate student rights. As a fellow in Dartmouth’s Polar Environmental Change Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT), she has been able to pair her scientific research of Greenland’s soils with a study of Greenlandic policy, meeting with Greenlandic national leaders during her field seasons and on Dartmouth’s campus. Bradley-Cook says that her “understanding of the social and political context has enriched [her] connection to Greenland, and has made [her] research all the more worthwhile.”

Bradley-Cook is honored to be recognized by AIBS and says that it will encourage her to pursue science-policy positions in the future. With such pressing issues as global warming and water shortages, we need leaders like Bradley-Cook to bring science and policy together.

by Ruth Heindel

A group of Dartmouth graduate women in science who completed fieldwork in Greenland this past summer, as part of the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, created a parody of the European Commission’s video, Science: It’s a Girl Thing!, that has attracted some attention. Their video, Science in Greenland: It’s a Girl Thing, highlights the real experiences of women in science, directly contrasting the original, lipstick-laden video which features fashionable women striking poses, and one person in a lab coat: a man. The graduate women’s video, featuring fun scenes, and clips from their research, has encouraged other creative video responses (links can be found in The New York Times article mentioned below), and the discussion continues to evolve.

For a full article go to Dartmouth Now or check out the coverage in The New York Times.

A number of Dartmouth students, faculty and staff will be celebrating the holidays far from home, in fact, just about as far from home as you can get, unless you’re a penguin.

Starting around Antarctica Day on December 1–which celebrates the signing of the international treaty in 1959 that preserves Antarctica as a place for research and peaceful purposes–and continuing well past Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years, and even Martin Luther King Day, Dartmouth researchers will be living and working “on the ice,” the nickname for the most uninhabitable continent on earth. But the only continent with no permanent residents also has a lot of visitors, many of them researchers.

“The opportunity to work in Antarctica is a life-changing experience, and many first-timers catch ‘polar fever’ and head South year after year,” says Myers Family Professor Ross Virginia, an ecologist who has been working in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys since 1989, and even has an Antarctic geological feature named after him–Virginia Valley (see inset). In a few weeks he’ll be leaving for Antarctica as will earth sciences professor Bob Hawley, Linda Morris, Education Program Director for the Ice Drilling Program Office at Thayer, and Ruth Heindel, an earth sciences graduate fellow in Dartmouth’s NSF-funded IGERT program in polar environmental change.

For full article go to the Dickey Center online.

With the last group of fellows arriving on campus this fall, one might think things are winding down for Dartmouth’s IGERT program. But in reality, research and collaboration are starting to truly cook now that all of the fellows are on campus.

IGERT students and faculty members are seen on their research trip near the west coast of Greenland. (Photo by Alexandra Giese)

“We’re really starting to move rapidly,” says Ross Virginia, the Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science and the director of Dartmouth’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program. As IGERT connects research to real world problems, Virginia says, “we’re trying to communicate science in insightful and meaningful ways.”

The program, which studies polar environmental change and supports Arctic research, is funded by a $3 million National Science Foundation grant. Since 2010, the program has facilitated collaboration across departments, conducted research in Greenland, and talked about climate change with diverse audiences—starting a conversation that’s expected to last for years.

IGERT provides two years of funding for PhD students at $30,000 per year. There are a total of 24 fellows—from the fields of engineering, ecology and evolutionary biology, and earth sciences—that connect through IGERT while working toward degrees in their home departments. Fellows take two IGERT core courses, which are taught by professors from different disciplines, and a five-week summer research trip to Greenland that serves as a capstone experience during their first year.

For full article, go to Dartmouth Now

Originally from Milton, New Hampshire, PhD student Jessica Trout-Haney joined the Cottingham laboratory this past fall, where she studies aquatic ecology.  Examining how toxins move through the food web, Jessica looks at what stimulates certain bacteria to produce these toxins—and what happens when animals eat them.  As a member of the Dartmouth IGERT program, Trout-Haney will also take part in one of the defining experiences of being an IGERT fellow this summer when she begins field research in Greenland.  In fact, this emphasis on the Arctic was a “huge draw” for Trout-Haney to join the IGERT program at Dartmouth.

“I really wanted to explore the science of the Arctic, and to learn about the physics of ice and snow,” explains Jess. “I wanted to learn how to apply ALL sides of scientific research to a problem, not just from my point of view as an ecologist.”  While IGERT team members’ research differs on an individual level, the group frequently meets within interdisciplinary cohorts to discuss ideas and research issues from the perspectives of other academic disciplines.  “We’re each other’s field assistants,” notes Jessica.

In addition to being a first-year PhD student in ecology, Jessica is also an accomplished dancer who recently had a solo show at the Hopkins Center.  As an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire—where she double majored in zoology and German and double minored in music and dance—Jessica realized how her seemingly disparate interests in both dance and science could inform and complement the other.  After college, she continued to dance during her graduate work at Villanova, where she received a masters degree in biology.

Without a doubt, Jessica believes that her life-long interest in dance has directly impacted her scientific work, providing her with a creative outlet from her academic research.  “A creative person asks creative questions,” says Jessica.  “I’m inspired by scientific issues, and it has made me think about how I portray these questions through dance.”

A self-described “huge fan” of the arts, Jessica pointed to last year’s collaboration between the dance company Phantom Limb and the IGERT program as an effective way to bridge the gap between science and the arts.  According to Trout-Haney, programs like Phantom Limb’s 69°S., which depicts Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-1916 Antarctica expedition through a modern lens, illustrate an innovative way to convey scientific ideas to diverse audiences.  “It fosters an appreciation of deep history in a way that’s accessible to everyone, not just scientists,” says Jessica.

At first, Jessica says her classmates and friends “tried to make a connection” between her dance and science background. While “overwhelmingly” supportive, many of her peers are often curious about how her interests relate to each other. For Jessica, the fit between dance and science is natural—and not all that unusual.

“Everyone here [at Dartmouth] is very focused on their academic work, but almost all of my classmates have really interesting outlets outside of the lab, whether it’s climbing, music, hiking [etc.]” says Jessica. “I’m not very unique in that respect!”

Jessica’s performance at Dartmouth was a part of the “HopStop” series at the Hopkins Center. Geared towards families and children, “HopStop” is a monthly series that features interactive performances and shows developed to engage children and get them excited about different forms of art and performance.  Jessica’s performance highlighted her work in various dance genres, including tap and body music.  A combination of traditions rooted in traditional African and Irish dance, body music can also extend itself into such recognizable styles as swing and softshoe.  During her Hop performance, Jessica demonstrated how to simultaneously create rhythms and sounds using all parts of the body, a movement which she describes as “very organic and earthy” and “something that we all do naturally as children.”  Noting the process of trial-and-error that occurs during such artistic exploration, Jessica likens the development of a performance to an “experiment” in which variables are continuously tested and altered.

According to Jessica, this sort of outreach is important not only to foster creativity, but also to show young children–much like herself at that age–that it’s okay to have different interests and passions. “You can have an artistic side as a scientist—one interest doesn’t have to exclude the other!”

 by Erin E. O’Flaherty

Graduate students from Dartmouth’s interdisciplinary PhD program in polar sciences are back in the far north, taking part in the program’s Greenland Field Seminar. Participants study terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems near Kangerlussuaq, snow and ice cryosphere processes on the Greenland ice sheet at Summit Camp, and environmental policy and science communication in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Read about their experiences on the team’s blog.

This year was quite eventful for the Department of Earth Sciences.  We were shocked by the untimely death of James Scott.  James’ PhD student Derek Smith is now working with Marilyn Fogel at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC. We graduated six students in the last year—one PhD and five MS’s—and welcomed nine new graduate students.  The graduated students are now working in the industry or studying for higher degrees at other universities.

Brian Dade recently replaced Carl Renshaw as chair of the department.  Carl is the Principal Investigator on a $2.5 million NSF grant that will fund an educational outreach program, in which Dartmouth graduate students will educate local middle school students in science, technology, engineering and math.

Bob Hawley’s glaciology group has grown considerably this year.  In addition to a new Post Doc (Eric Lutz), there are two new graduate students: Thomas Overly (PhD, IGERT Fellow) and Blaine Morriss (MS).  Thus far, Bob’s group has garnered over $1 million in external support.  Last summer, Bob, Gifford Wong (PhD, IGERT Fellow), and Zoe Courville (UNH Post Doc) traveled to Summit Camp, Greenland, to procure a 100m ice core as well as conduct several snowpit studies.  This summer, the glaciology group will be working on six concurrent, externally-funded projects, which will take six Dartmouth grad students and faculty to Greenland this summer to undertake three independent field campaigns.  Gifford, who recently returned from an austral summer abroad, also participated in drilling the longest American ice core (3331 meters!) while working on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core Project.

Meredith Kelly’s research group is comprised of four graduate students who use exposure age dating and lake sediment records to understand past climate changes.  Meredith was recently awarded an NSF Paleo Perspectives on Climate Change grant to study the mechanisms of climate change in the southern tropical and mid-latitude Andes during the Holocene.  Justin Stroup (PhD) and Sam Beal (PhD) organized and led a research expedition to map glacial geology, collect boulder samples, and obtain lake sediment cores near Quelccaya Ice Cap, Peru. Laura Levy (PhD, IGERT fellow) conducted a successful field season to East Greenland in September, and she has since been analyzing boulder samples and lake sediment cores. Tom Baker (MS) will travel to Thunder Bay, Ontario this spring to collect boulder samples that he will use to study the eastward drainage of glacial Lake Agassiz.

Xiahong Feng’s stable isotope group admitted two PhD students, Alex Lauder and Ben Kopec, under the IGERT program.  The group is using stable isotopes of precipitation to study the impact of sea-ice change on both ocean-surface evaporation and land precipitation in the Arctic under the newly-launched Isotopic Investigation of Sea Ice and Precipitation in the Arctic Climate System (iisPACS) project, jointly led by Professors Feng and Posmentier, of Dartmouth College, and Jeff Burkhart, of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.  Alex and Ben will travel to Greenland this summer through the NSF-sponsored IGERT fellowship program.  They will measure the isotopic composition of vapor over diverse bodies of water and sample lake water for later isotopic analysis.  Thirty degrees further west, Kelly Everhart is planning to finish her Masters project, which characterizes the extent to which sea ice modifies the isotopic composition of precipitation landing on the North Slope of Alaska, early this summer.

Mukul Sharma’s radiogenic isotope lab group admitted two new PhD students, Hannah Hallock and Kelly Landau.  Two old hands in the lab, Tim Blazina, MS, and Yingzhe Wu, MS, will be presenting their work in the AGU fall meeting.  Tim has done extensive field work on New Zealand’s North Island where he is studying chemical weathering.  Yingzhe has been studying the origin of the magnetic spherules at the Younger Dryas boundary, a period of intense climate change that coincided with the disappearance of the Clovis people and mega-fauna of North America.

The fluvial geomorphology group, under the auspices of Carl Renshaw, Brian Dade and Frank Magilligan, admitted one new student, Eirik Buraas.  He will investigate the effect of dams on New England rivers.  John Gartner, a third-year PhD student, was recently awarded two grants.  The NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant will help support his research on dam removal and sediment transport, and a National Center for Airborne Laser Altimetry Seed Grant allows repeat LiDAR data at one dam removal. This spring, Nathan Hamm will defend his dissertation on fine sediment dynamics in stream beds.

In other news, Jennifer Bailard just finished another successful field season in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.  Rachel Neurath is nearing completion of her MS thesis on soil carbon cycling in harvested and old growth forests, and Jie Yang is gearing up for his PhD on heavy metal contamination.

By John Gartner, Sam Beal, Kelly Everhart, Gifford Wong, and Mukul Sharma.

Photo: Dartmouth graduate students Gifford Wong (PhD, Earth Sciences), Lauren Culler (PhD, EEB) and Simone Whitecloud (PhD, EEB) during their IGERT trip to Greenland.