News & Events

May 2009

At a Graduate Student Recognition ceremony hosted by the Department of Biological Sciences, Jennifer Ison, LEAP Fellow and Ecology and Evolution graduate student, was presented with an Undergraduate Mentoring Award for her commitment to developing the scientific skills of undergraduate students.

April 2009

Carrie Seltzer, a second-year doctoral student in the Ecology and Evolution group, and an IGERT-LEAP Fellow, has won a highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to study how fragmented landscapes affect Tanzanian fruit bats which are important agents of pollination and seed dispersal. The NSF fellowship awards recipients $30,000 yearly for three years and provides allowances for tuition, fees, and travel.

Carrie will begin her fellowship this summer collecting data in Tanzania, and will use her research findings to write her doctoral dissertation and publish the results in peer-reviewed journals.

To learn more about Carrie and her research, you can visit her website.

February 2009

Dr. Mary Ashley Receives Graduate Mentoring Award from the Graduate College

The Graduate College has awarded Dr. Mary Ashley a Graduate Mentoring Award for excellence and innovation in graduate mentoring. Professor Ashley is a member of the Ecology and Evolution group within Biological Sciences and is director of the Landscape, Ecological and Anthropogenic Process (LEAP) doctoral training program.   Since joining the UIC faculty in 1992, Professor Ashley has advised over twenty-five graduate students.  She has helped them to become confident and productive scientists while positioning themselves for rewarding careers either in or outside the academic world. She has supported the widely diverse interests of her students, whose research projects have ranged from the mating patterns of oak trees and the evolutionary genetics of tapirs and deer mice to the migratory habits of sandhill cranes, gene flow patterns in urban peregrine falcons, and the mating habits of sharks --- to name but a few. A champion of interdisciplinarity, Prof. Ashley received funding from the NSF in 2006 for a $2.8M IGERT training grant that provides 24 fellowships for doctoral students in the LEAP Program, which includes faculty and students from three colleges (LAS, Engineering, and CUPPA).  Her scientific success and accessibility have made her a role model for women in science, and she served as the first senior facilitator of WISEST at UIC. 

Congratulations, Dr. Ashley!

May 2008

LEAP welcomes Dr. Emily Minor to our faculty!

Dr. Minor recently accepted a joint position in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy at UIC as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Minor joins us from the Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland 's Center for Environmental Science where she is a postdoctoral researcher. She received her doctorate from Duke University where she studied the effects of urbanization on the distribution and conservation of forest birds. Her research interests also include the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), simulation modeling and spatial statistics to understand habitat fragmentation and connectivity. Her recent work involves the application of network theory to investigate the spread of exotic plants in disturbed landscapes. With her expertise in landscape ecology and interest in urban ecosystems, Dr. Minor will be a valuable addition to the LEAP community.

May 2008

Dr. Mary Ashley and, LEAP Fellow, Jennifer Ison will attend the annual National Science Foundation Meeting for IGERT participants. The meeting will be held in Arlington, Virginia, May 18 - 20. Jennifer has submitted an abstract and will present a poster on recent research by LEAP Fellows. The poster is entitled: "Keeping the Chicago region free of poison hemlock: an interdisciplinary study of the front of an invasive plant." Jennifer has worked on this project with Fellow LEAP students, Paul Gulezian, Dept of Biological Sciences, and Kelly Grantberg, Civil & Materials Engineering, as part of a capstone project.

May 2008

LEAP Trainee Michael Iversen was awarded a 2008 Conservation Design Forum (CDF) sustainable Design Summer Internship. CDF, located in Elmhurst , Illinois , offers planning and design services that result in ecologically, culturally, and economically sustainable results. Michael, an architect, has proposed a projected to develop a sustainable vision plan and demonstration project for the Village of Oak Park . He is currently awaiting approval from the Village. Michael has also submitted a proposal to the American Institute of Architects Research Program entitled, “An Urbanized Ecosystem: Proof of Concept Study.” The goal of the proposed project is to demonstrate how an ecological-based design approach can be applied to an urbanized ecosystem. AIA awards will be announced May 16.

May 2008

Trainee Michael Iversen presented his "Green Blocks Initiative" at a public lecture series in Oak Park (Green Tuesdays in the Village). GBI was developed to affect incremental change in Oak Park on a block-by-block basis and will involve citizen scientists.

January 2008

During the spring semester, 2008, we successfully launched a new course, “Research Methods in Landscape, Ecological and Anthropogenic Processes,” designed to help students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to evaluate, choose and/or utilize appropriate research and evaluation tools used in a variety of disciplines to conduct research, manage natural systems and evaluate impacts of anthropogenic activities. Instructional format includes 1) hands-on laboratory modules taught by faculty from the natural sciences, environmental engineering, urban planning, information systems, social sciences and others; and 2) synthesis of the tools and techniques learned throughout the course in research application papers describing how they would employ the cross-disciplinary methods to their research topics. The course enrolled 18 students, including 9 LEAP students and 9 drawn from graduate programs in various departments.