Grants and Awards

NSF grants, a CAREER Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award are just a few of the highlights that have happened in the Department of Biological Sciences.

Guiliang Tang Obtains $2.5M NSF Grant to Enhance Crop Genetics

Cereal crops may seem as simple as snap– crackle–pop, but in reality they are among the most complicated species in the plant world, at least from a genetics standpoint. As a result, scientists have been hard put to tease out what genetic mechanisms are responsible for which characteristics. But now a Michigan Tech biologist is leading a $2.5 million project to do just that.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Associate Professor Guiliang Tang and his colleagues at Kansas State University and the University of California at Riverside are undertaking a three-year study of key genetic processes underlying three of the world’s most important food crops: maize, rice, and soy. Ultimately, their discoveries could lead to the development of crops with higher yields and greater resistance to stressors.

Co-principal investigators on the research project, “Inactivation of microRNAs in Crop Plants Using Short Tandem Target Mimic (STTM) Technology,” are Associate Professor Hairong Wei (SFRES) of Michigan Tech, Wenbo Ha and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Xuemei Chen of UC Riverside, and Harold Trick of Kansas State.

Amy Marcarelli Receives NSF CAREER Award

In the world of aquatic biology, it's a long-held belief that what goes up must come down. As human activity causes nitrogen loads to go up along the banks of rivers and streams, nitrogen levels go down through another process. Amy Marcarelli has received a highly prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study this nitrogen conversion balance.

She is looking at two biological processes: nitrogen fixation and denitrification. Nitrogen fixation is sort of like a magic show where microbes take nitrogen out of thin air, turning it into a usable form for all organisms. Although nitrogen fixation could offset nitrogen losses from denitrification, we know little about where and when it occurs in streams and rivers and how it responds to human activities.

With funding from the $794,662, five-year CAREER Award, Marcarelli and her team will help create more accurate nitrogen budgets and models which are needed to better understand and manage the human effects on nitrogen cycling at both regional and global scales. Not only will her research look to affirm—or disprove—long-held beliefs, but also to create a more ecologically savvy citizenry by integrating ecosystem ecology techniques into K–12 and undergraduate education.

Huckins and Marcarelli Receive New Grants

Professor Casey Huckins is the principal investigator on a research project that received a $331,979 grant from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. The project is titled Innovative and Multifaceted Control of Invasive Eurasian and Hybrid Watermilfoil Using Integrative Pest Management Principles. Amy Marcarelli is a co-PI on this project, along with Erika Hersch-Green and the Michigan Tech Research Institute's Colin Brooks. This funding is part of the new MDNR Michigan Invasive Species Grants Program.

Huckins, Marcarelli, Brooks, Rodney Chimner (SFRES), and Guy Meadows (GLRC) have received $499,887 for a two-year research and development project "Arresting the Spread of Eurasian Watermilfoil in Lake Superior," from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

A team led by Marcarelli received $50,000 from the University of Michigan Water Center to study the impact of remediation of stamp sands along Hills Creek on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Huckins is a co-investigator on the project.

Kerfoot Secures Research, Lifetime Achievement Awards

Professor W. Charles Kerfoot’s insatiable curiosity and enthusiasm for discovery have propelled him into all corners of his discipline and well beyond the confines of Michigan Technological University. For both the breadth and depth of his contributions to limnology, Kerfoot received the 2013 Research Award and the 2015 IAGLR Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kerfoot came to Michigan Tech in 1989 from the University of Michigan, joining the biological sciences faculty and serving as an adjunct professor of geology. He is also director of the Lake Superior Ecosystem Research Center.

“He has brought tens of millions of dollars in external funding to Michigan Tech, including participation in two of the largest Great Lakes research projects to date,” wrote Chandrashekhar Joshi, chair of biological sciences, in nominating Kerfoot for the award. In addition, Joshi noted, Kerfoot and the late C. Robert Baillod wrote the proposal that precipitated funding for the $25 million Great Lakes Research Center.

Kerfoot has always taken the broad view. As an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, he majored in both geology and zoology. After earning a PhD in Zoology from the University of Michigan, he held appointments at the University of Washington, Dartmouth, Cornell, and U–M before coming to Michigan Tech.

“Since coming here, I’ve done much more than I could have elsewhere,” he says. In particular, Michigan Tech’s location on the Great Lakes has been an asset. He was a participant in two of the largest freshwater grants ever awarded, totaling more than $20 million.

Both projects drew researchers in from several universities and government agencies. “I’ve always tried with my research to go outside the University and connect with other programs,” he says. “It makes you more competitive. I always advise my grad students to get out as much as you can.”

The lifetime achievement award from IAGLR recognizes important and continued contributions to the field of Great Lakes research for 20 years or more. In a letter notifying Kerfoot of the award, Douglas D. Kane, president of the IAGLR, congratulated him on an “incredibly productive and significant career.”

W. Charles Kerfoot's work on Bythotrephes—an invasive zooplankton—was featured in a recent issue of Michigan Tech Magazine.

Nancy Auer Earns American Fisheries Society's Award

Professor Nancy Auer has been named winner of the 2015 Michigan Chapter of the American Fisheries Society’s Justin Leonard Award. The award recognizes outstanding professional competence and achievement of a professional employed in the field of fisheries or aquatic biology in Michigan. Her nomination for the award included:

Nancy Auer remains an internationally recognized expert in fisheries and aquatic science and has spent her entire professional career in Michigan working to improve our understanding and management of aquatic ecosystems and lake sturgeon in particular. Auer came to Michigan from Minnesota and began her career as a graduate student and research assistant at the University of Michigan in 1975, working under Justin Leonard until his death. Upon completion of her MS degree, Auer continued working at the University of Michigan as a research scholar. In 1984, Auer accepted a faculty position at U–M and began working on the Sturgeon River, which would lead to her dissertation research and PhD in 1995. She has authored or co-authored over 20 journal articles, contributed chapters to four books, and co-edited the book The Great Lake Sturgeon. Auer’s impact on the fisheries profession extends beyond Michigan as her students have gone on to professional positions across the Midwest. In summary, Auer’s scientific achievements, dedication to quality teaching and mentoring, and service to the fisheries profession are deserving of the Leonard Award.

Chandrashekhar Joshi, chair of biological sciences, congratulated Auer on the award. “Her nomination nicely summarizes her lifetime of research work,” he said. “We are very happy for this well-deserved recognition by her peers, and we are fortunate to have Nancy as our esteemed colleague.”

Bagley Honored with the Charles Porter Award

Susan Bagley received the Charles Porter Award from the Society of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology. This award recognizes member who have an outstanding record of sustained service to the Society for a period of seven or more years in various capacities—such as a Society officer, chair of a standing or presidential committee, SIMB News editor-in-chief, JIMB editor-in-chief, Developments editor-in-chief, program chair, or other service to the Society acceptable to the committee and board—and have been an active member of SIMB for 10 or more years.

Susan Bagley is professor emerita of environmental microbiology; she has more than 35 years of experience as an environmental microbiologist, working in academia and government—with the US Environmental Protection Agency—on microbial-based treatment of air, waterborne, and industrial organic wastes, microbial production of bio-based fuels, and mutagenicity and toxicity of environmental pollutants.

Morin, Durocher, and Hersch-Green Receive Jackson Center Grants

Due to a generous gift from William G. Jackson, the William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is pleased to announce its 2015 grant recipients. Nearly $55,000 in grants were awarded to instructors and teams of instructors at $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 levels. These grants will support course/program reform or expansion projects using blended and online learning.

This year’s solicitation placed special emphasis on mentoring of instructors new to blended learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, shared content, matching support, testing, and assessment. A committee, assembled by the provost and the CTL director, reviewed many compelling grant proposals in order to select this year’s grant recipients.

Grants that included biological sciences faculty are:

• Blended and Active Learning for Health Sciences at Michigan Tech ($5,000), Brigitte Morin and John Durocher
• Integrated Statistics for Social, Behavioral, and Biological Sciences Using Blended Learning ($3,000), Susan Amato-Henderson (CLS) and Erika Hersch-Green.

Werner Wins Michigan Tech Teaching Award

Success is all in the planning. Just ask Thomas Werner, recipient of Michigan Tech's Distinguished Teaching Award. For Werner, who won the award in the assistant professor/ professor of practice/lecturer category, each semester starts an entire year in advance. “People think I’m crazy to start planning my courses so early, but I like to check all of the material to ensure that it’s accurate,” he said. “I spend about twelve hours preparing for each fifty-minute lecture.”

Werner came to Michigan Tech in 2010, after serving as a postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin Madison and completing his PhD at the Umeå Center for Molecular Pathogenesis. He teaches genetics, immunology, and genetic techniques.

His favorite thing about teaching is the energy that comes from working with students. “I’ve found that in research you can give 100% and only get 10% out," he said. “With teaching, if you give your students 100%, they’ll return the favor.”

Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to nearly 7,500 students from more than 60 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.