Ellie is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Ledon-Rettig lab, studying how shifts in temperature will effect the plasticity of fitness related traits across generations in spadefoot toads. She has taught Animal Behavior Workshop and is involved with science outreach at the K-12 and community level. Ellie wants to continue working in the intersection of teaching and research with the ultimate goal of becoming a professor at a small liberal arts school.

“I am a 4th year PhD candidate in IU's Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior program and am part of the Lau Lab. I am primarily interested in uncovering the mechanisms by which nitrogen enrichment may affect plant-pollinator interactions. I conduct field work observing pollinator behavior here on the IU campus and at Kellogg Biological Station in southwest Michigan; I have also had the great opportunity to mentor and work with many undergrads as part of this research. I really value the educational aspects of my role as an ecologist and, beyond directly mentoring undergraduates on independent projects, have spent several semesters as an AI for a Field Ecology course and have collaborated with teachers in Illinois to develop a classroom activity to teach elementary students about pollination. I plan to use this award to support myself during my final field season, during which I will be traveling to my field sites frequently and attending the Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Salt Lake City. After completing my dissertation, I hope to find a postdoctoral position where I can continue investigating plant-pollinator interactions and expanding my teaching experience so that I can eventually work at a primarily undergraduate institution.”

Hal Terry is a third-year Ph.D candidate in the Ledón-Rettig lab studying the evolutionary consequences of early life conditions. To answer this, he uses a combination of field work, morphological analyses, and behaviors for intraspecific & interspecific comparisons among frogs.

Ashish is a first-year grad student in the Phillips lab and is interested in the role microbes play in tree community assembly and how this relationship scales up to influence ecosystem functioning. He’ll spend the next couple of months understanding how mycorrhizal dominance in forests will influence forest-level productivity.

Atalanta is a second-year Ph.D student in the Rosvall lab and NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Her research combines field, molecular, and bioinformatic approaches to investigate behavioral and physiological mechanisms of heat tolerance in wild tree swallows.