Category: Stories

Rika Anderson, Assistant Professor of Biology, has received support for no-cost gene-sequencing of microbial and viral fluid samples by the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, California. In her project “Microbial and viral mediation of biogeochemical cycles from source to sink in hydrothermal vent systems,” Prof. Anderson investigates how microbes and viruses are involved in the cycling of nutrients that are produced by deep-sea hydrothermal vents and released into the broader biosphere. As lead investigator, Prof. Anderson will work with Karthik Anantharaman (Assistant Professor of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert (Assistant Professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University) on the project.

Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments, was awarded a 2020 Folk and Traditional Arts grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She will teach traditional Chinese music and ensemble playing in three Twin Cities locations, culminating in final performances by the three ensembles.

Ahmed Ibrahim, Assistant Professor of Sociology, has been selected as a Visiting Fellow by the 2019 Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). CODESRIA’s “African Academic Diaspora Support to African Universities Programme” (supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York) aids African academics in the Diaspora to undertake activities aimed at strengthening teaching and research in the social sciences, humanities, and higher education studies at universities throughout Africa. During fall 2019, Professor Ibrahim’s fellowship at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania will enable him to work with Department of Sociology colleagues in reviewing the curriculum as well as deliver lectures and supervise post graduate students.

Julia Strand, Assistant Professor of Psychology, is the recipient of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) to assess how visual information about speech affects the cognitive effort necessary to understand spoken language. The three-year grant supports undergraduate research assistants and an educational associate in each year. The results of Prof. Strand’s research team will inform the design of devices that generate visual stimuli to accompany spoken language in difficult listening situations, which may be particularly useful for the elderly or hard of hearing.

Dan Hernández, Associate Professor of Biology, will serve as a Faculty Instructor with the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at UC Santa Cruz, led by Erika Zavaleta. The two-year conservation leadership program exposes early-career college students to the field of environmental conservation through field research, leadership, and professional training. As contracted program staff, Prof. Hernández works closely with the students to help design and conduct research projects in a variety of California’s spectacular landscapes.

Melissa Eblen-Zayas, Professor of Physics and Director of the Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching, in conjunction with colleagues in academic technology and counterparts at Williams College and Davidson College, has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation in support of a project titled “Online Modules for Quantitative Skill Building: exploring adaptation and adoption across a consortium” (#1829135).

Building on previous NSF projects, this three-year, $290,940 project will support the development of online tools to teach quantitative skills at the ten colleges of the Liberal Arts Consortium for Digital Innovation (LACOL). Prof. Eblen-Zayas will work closely with Jonathan Leamon, Director of Instructional Technology at Williams College; Laura J Muller, Ph.D., Director of Quantitative Skills Programs and Peer Support at Williams; and Sundi Richard, Lead Instructional Designer at Davidson on the project. They will guide an effort to develop as many as eight online modules to teach key quantitative skills of wide value across the sciences and social sciences, to test and refine those modules at LACOL institutions, and to disseminate the modules widely within and possibly beyond LACOL. A team of researchers at Carleton’s Science Education Resource Center (SERC), led by Ellen Iverson, will study faculty adaptation and adoption of these online modules across the consortium. 

Dan Hernández, Associate Professor of Biology, has been awarded a contract with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to participate in an adaptive management project to study the control of smooth brome invasion in native prairies. Prof. Hernandez will measure nutrients and microbial activity in soils of upland prairie dominated by native and non-native species at five sites managed by the Scientific and Natural Areas (SNA) and Minnesota Prairie Bank program in southwestern Minnesota.

Caroline Turnage-Butterbaugh, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant (#1902193) for her project “Class groups of number field and zeros of L-functions.” Prof. Turnage-Butterbaugh’s research will pursue problems in the intersection of analytic and algebraic number theory, developing new methods for studying the vertical distribution of zeros of L-functions and obtaining new results concerning the class groups of number fields and Landau-Siegel zeros. Her project will bring to Carleton graduate associates who are interested in better understanding the teaching and research culture at a liberal arts college and in interacting with talented undergraduates, and who will work with Prof. Turnage-Butterbaugh on problems related to the project. Carleton students in turn will benefit from attending colloquium talks by the graduate associates and from learning about graduate school culture at research universities.

Sarah Titus, Professor of Geology, has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant (#1917048) for a collaborative research project entitled “Linking slip dynamics to off-fault deformation in strike-slip fault systems.”…

Caroline Turnage-Butterbaugh, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, will serve as a Senior Scientist on the recently awarded National Science Foundation grant (#1854398) “Focused Research Group: Averages of L-functions and Arithmetic Stratification.” The project is under the direction of J. Brian Conrey (American Institute of Mathematics), Henryk Iwaniec (Rutgers University), Jonathan Keating (University of Bristol), Trevor D. Wooley (University of Bristol), and Kannan Soundararajan (Stanford University). This research will make precise the connection between conjectures about averages of shifted convolutions of arithmetic functions and conjectures about the statistics of values and zeros of the Riemann zeta function and other families of L-functions. The vast research project will be carried out as a concerted team effort. The management team includes five PIs and two Senior Scientists. As one of the Senior Scientists, Prof. Turnage-Butterbaugh will contribute to the project research and to the mentoring of the other team members: junior faculty consultants, postdocs, graduate students, and participants at mini-workshops held at the American Institute of Mathematics, Stanford, Rutgers, and Bristol.