Accomplishments: College of Sciences
Paleontologist Josh Bonde (Geoscience) recently was featured on the Vegas PBS series Outdoor Nevada. Bonde and host John Burke went fossil hunting at Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument.
Vegas PBS’ Outdoor Nevada originally aired from 1995 to 1999. Hosted by highly regarded television host and actor John Burke, Outdoor Nevada will delve…
Brett Riddle (Life Sciences) is a co-author on a paper that was recently published in Nature. The article is titled, "Holocene Shifts in the Assembly of Plant and Animal Communities Implicate Human Impacts." Understanding how ecological communities are organized and how they change through time is critical to predicting the effects of climate…
Arthur Baragar (Mathematical Sciences) gave the opening remarks at the A-Star Winter Math Camp, which was held on the 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ campus Dec. 19-23. The camp presents a unique opportunity for interested and talented students to improve their math skills during winter break before the upcoming competition season.
Jason Steffen (Physics and Astronomy) was a guest on NPR's Marketplace, talking about how to more efficiently board an airplane. He began researching the issue as a graduate student after being frustrated by slow boarding processes and flight delays.
The algorithm he used to find the optimal boarding method is called Markov Chain…
Zhongbo Yu (Geoscience) recently received the John Hem Award for Excellence in Science & Engineering from the National Ground Water Association.
The award honors significant scientific or engineering contributions to the understanding of groundwater. The award will be presented at the 2015 Groundwater Expo in Las Vegas this week.
Yu was…
Brian Hedlund (Life Sciences) recently received an $876,229 National Science Foundation grant for his project, "Collaborative Proposal: Biodiversity Discovery and Analysis of 'Aigarchaeota', a Globally Distributed But Poorly Understood Archaeal Lineage." The grant is for three years.
Biochemistry professor Ernesto Abel-Santos and former postdoctoral scholar Amber Howerton were recently issued patent #9,079,935, which describes a novel compound designed to prevent Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections.
Scott Abella (Life Sciences) and his collaborators at the University of California, Berkeley, received a $48,000 award (51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ portion) from the congressionally authorized Joint Fire Science Program. This nationally competitive funding agency supports fire research in wildlands and the wildland-urban interface across the United States.…
Josh Bonde (Geoscience) spoke to nearly 800 students from Kitty Ward Elementary School about fossils as part of National Fossil Day at Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument on Oct. 14.
Steve Ross, Las Vegas Mayor pro tem, spoke to the students about the new national monument and Superintendent Jon Burpee taught the…
Michael Pravica (Physics and Astronomy) recently received a 2015 Stewardship Science Academic Alliances award through the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. The three-year, $780,000 grant is to develop a novel field of science Pravica has been developing, called "useful hard X-ray photochemistry."…
Scott Abella (Life Sciences) just published a book, Conserving America's National Parks. The book coincides with the 100-year centennial of the National Park Service in 2016. The 200-page book provides an unprecedented view of the challenges and threats facing the 408 units of the national park system. It also provides inspiring…
Scott Abella (Life Sciences) recently received two grants. One is a three-year, $115,000 grant from the National Park Service (NPS). He is working with the southwest exotic plant management team of the NPS to plan, write, and execute three restoration plans for two national parks. There will be two plans for Guadalupe Mountains…