News
Oct 2021. A nice press release on a great publication in collaboration with some great people. [link]
June 2020. Happy to announce the launch of the the launch of the Tennessee-Kentucky Plant Atlas! [link]
April 2019. A BIG congratulations to Nick Koenig! He was just selected as a 2019 Barry Goldwater Scholar, the first to be selected from EKU since 2011.
April 2019. EKU students Calvin Andries and Nick Koenig are headed to the ASB meeting in Memphis, TN to present their work. Calvin will be presenting his work on the flora of three wetlands in the Red River Gorge [link] , and Nick will present a poster on the EKU Herbaria, including an update on the digitization process of our NSF grant [link].
Jan 2019. Excited to start my new position as Collections Manager (and eventually Research Scientist) at the University of Michigan Herbarium.
Sept 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the EKU College of Science Travel Award to present at ASB in Spring 2019!
July 2018. Thomas McFadden successfully defends his Master's Thesis on the Vascular Flora of the Red River Gorge in Powell, Menifee, and Wolfe Counties Kentucky. Congratulations Thomas!
June 2018. Our NSF Grant was funded! Imperiled plants of tropical rivers: phylogeny, biogeography, and systematics of Podostemaceae. This work is in collaboration with C.T. Philbrick and C.P. Bove.
June 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the Kentucky Society of Natural History Student Research grant for his work on the Vascular Flora of Wetlands in the Red River Gorge Geological Area and Clifty Wilderness in Menifee and Powell Counties of Kentucky.
April 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the Kentucky Native Plant Society Student Research grant for his work on the Vascular Flora of Wetlands in the Red River Gorge Geological Area and Clifty Wilderness in Menifee and Powell Counties of Kentucky.
March 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the Society of Herbarium Curators Undergraduate Research grant for his work on the Vascular Flora of Wetlands in the Red River Gorge Geological Area and Clifty Wilderness in Menifee and Powell Counties of Kentucky.
May 2017. Congrats to Calvin Andries and Nicholas Koenig! Calvin received the the Robert S. Lawrence award in Botany and Nick received the David Eakin Outstanding Freshman award. Both awards are from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences.
Feb 2017. Just back from the Kentucky Organization of Field Stations (https://kentuckyfieldstations.wordpress.com/) meeting at Maywoods where I gave a talk on using Symbiota portals to manage species lists.
Jan 2017. Congratulations to Thomas McFadden for receiving the Kentucky Native Plant Society student research grant (http://www.knps.org/grants.html) for his work on the flora of the Red River Gorge.
July 2016. Excited to be off to the Botany 2016 conference. Check out our Collections Education abstract *here* and some nifty work on glacial relicts in Draba *here*.
May 2016. Thomas McFadden and I took part in the NSF-Funded Workshop on Herbarium Techniques at University of Georgia Herbarium. See a summary *here*.
May 2016: Congratulations to undergraduate Thomas McFadden... times two! Thomas received the 2016 Outstanding Senior Award from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. Recipients of this award demonstrate the following: consistently excellent scholarship; involvement in scientific organizations or clubs which reinforce career interests; special recognition or awards; leadership and service activities involving other biology students; a mature attitude toward pursuing a career in the biological sciences. Thomas also was accepted into the EKU Master of Science in Biology program and received a Graduate Assistantship position from the EKU Biology department. Thomas and I are currently developing his project which will focus on the flora of Kentucky.
January 2016: NSF preliminary proposal submitted, ASB abstract submitted, and Plant Systematics and General Botany classes off to a good start. Two independent student research projects start next week. Work on the digitization of the EKU herbarium rolls on. Not a bad start to the new year!
November 2015: Congratulations to Glen Kalisz and Lameace Hussain. Their poster won second place in the KAS meeting research competition.
October 2015: Congratulations to Glen Kalisz who just received the Kentucky Native Plant Society Student Research Grant for his work on forest regeneration at the EKU Maywoods Environmental and Educational Laboratory.
October 2015: Looking forward to our presentations at the Kentucky Academy of Science meeting on November 13-14, 2015. Thomas McFadden will be presenting on The Vascular Flora of Taylor Fork Ecological Area, Madison County, Kentucky, and Glen Kalisz and Lameace Hussain will present their work on Incorporating the plant collections of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission into the Ronald L. Jones Herbarium at Eastern Kentucky University.
October 2015: Headed to the second annual Kentucky Botanical Symposium. Looking forward to some great talks dealing with the Conservation, Restoration and Landscape in the Bluegrass.
September 2015: Great press release *link* for our herbarium digitization workflows paper. Check out the paper here *link*
September 2015: Headed to the iDigBio Managing Natural History Collections Data for Global Discoverability Workshop at Arizona State University *link*
July 2015. Honored to have our project on Connecting Students to Citizen Science and Curated Collections *link* mentioned by Dr. Tom Ranker, President of ASPT, in his annual address to the ASPT Banquet at Botany 2015. His talk was on Teaching Plant Systematics Today: Classic Techniques & Novel Approaches.
July 2015: Wish I was headed to Botany 2015 but there is too much going on this summer. Some of our work is being presented there however. Check out our abstracts on Connecting Students to Citizen Science and Curated Collections *link* and the Phylogenomics of Viridiplantae using plastid genome sequence data *link*.
May 2015: Headed to Gainsville, FL for the SPNCH meeting, a Symbiota workshop and a presentation on our student plant collection project *link*. And then back to EKU to teach the new Field Botany Summer course at Maywoods. A great (and busy!) start to the summer.
May 2015: Congratulations to undergraduate Thomas Mcfadden who received the Robert S. Larance Memorial Endowed Scholarship from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This award recognizes students who have a strong interest and achievement in the areas of botany and/or the field sciences.
May 2015: Congratulations to undergraduate Lameace Hussain who received the LaFuze Scholarship in Biology from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This award is the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship awarded by the Department of Biological Sciences at EKU. Recipients must have attained a distinguished scholastic record and show strong evidence of potential for developing a career in the biological sciences.
May 2015: Congratulations to undergraduate Glen Kallisz who received the Arthur and Frieda Bingham Prize from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This scholarship is awarded to a rising sophomore or junior who, as a major in Biology (not enrolled in the pre-med emphasis) has demonstrated outstanding academic performance.
January 2015: Headed to the iDigBio Herbarium Workflow Workshop at Valdosta State *link*
January 2015: Our paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology on the phylogeny of all green plants was one of the top 5 downloaded articles for 2014 and one of the top 10 articles in the journal for 2014 ! *link*
November 2014: Congratulations to undergraduate WIlliam Ciocca who won first place for his oral presentation in the Botany section at the annual meeting of the Kentucky Academy of Sciences.
August 2014: Our NSF TCN Grant was funded! Check out the EKU press release here *link* and the iDigBio press release here *link*
July 2014: Just back from Botany 2014. Check out our Podostemaceae phylogeny abstracts here: *link* and here: *link*
July 2014: Also at Botany 2014: I attended the Small Herbarium Digitization Workshop put on by iDigBio and NANSH. Link summary of the event here *link*
June 2014: Abstract from Evolution 2014. Organellar phylgenomics of green plants *link*
May 2014: Congratulations to undergraduate William Ciocca who received the Robert S. Larance Memorial Endowed Scholarship from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This award recognizes students who have a strong interest and achievement in the areas of botany and/or the field sciences.
May 2014: Check out some great pictures from the Spring Flora Floracliff workshop *link*
April 2014: Congratulations to undergraduate Thomas McFadden. His proposal to conduct a flora of the Taylor Fork Natural Area at EKU was funded by the Natural Areas Research Committee.
March 2014: Our research on the phylogeny of all green plants is featured the BMC online magazine Biome (no longer available) and the EKU University News *link*
Sept 2013: Had a great time at the Kentucky Native Plant Society meeting at the Land Between the Lakes. Check out this post by the Sewanee Herbarium *link*
June 2013: Our paper on the phylogeny of the clusioid clade and the placement of the ancient rosid fossil Paleoclusia is out now in IJPS *link*
April 2013: Just back from the ASB iDigBio Digitization Symposium and Workshop... great stuff! Lots of ideas for the herbarium at EKU.
April 2013: I will be presenting our work on resolving the phylogeny of all green plants (Viridiplantae) using plastid genome data at the ASB meeting in Charleston, WV.
April 2013: Evolution 2013 abstract posted. Dynamic variation in rates of body mass evolution in birds.
March 2013: Botany 2013 abstract posted. Does the evidence really support an Amborella sister hypothesis for flowering plants?
February 2013: Very happy to have been selected as a recipient of the 2012-13 College of Arts & Sciences Junior Faculty Summer Research Award!
February 2013: Graduate student Heidi Braunreiter receives support from the Kentucky EPSCoR Research Scholars Program. Her project: Resolving the Evolutionary History of the New World Riverweeds (Podostemaceae).
October 2012: Our paper on the phylogeny of Malpighiales is out now in PNAS *link*
October 2012: I will be presenting a talk on our recent work on the phylogeny of the green plant clade (Viridiplantae) at the the Kentucky Academy of Science annual meeting on Oct. 20th. The meeting is being held this year at EKU.
August 2012: Excited to have accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University!
March 2012: Looking forward to the Botany 2012 meetings in Columbus, OH. My home state! I will be giving a talk titled From algae to angiosperms - inferring the phylogeny of green plants (Viridiplantae) from 360 plastid genomes. I also helped out with a poster titled The evolution of the phytochrome gene family in mosses.
I will be helping teach the course Phylogenetics - new applications, pitfalls and challenges at the EES Summer School, in Frauenchiemsee, Germany, in August 2011; with Professors Alexandros Stamatakis, John Wiens, and many others.
June 2011: Just arrived at my new posdoctoral position in the Soltis Lab at the University of Florida.
Jan 2011: The first chapter of my dissertation concerning the phylogeny of the clusioid clade has been published in the American Journal of Botany.
Nov 2010: Great news! The first chapter of my dissertation concerning the phylogeny of the clusioid clade has been tentatively accepted for publication in the American Journal of Botany.
Feb 2010: A follow-up to our 2008 Concord study links climate change to invasive species success and was published in PLoS ONE *link*. This publication was featured as a Research Highlight in Nature and covered by the Boston Globe *link1*,*link2*, Boston Public Radio *link*, the Harvard Crimson *link*, the Harvard Gazette *link*, Harvard Magazine *link*, and Scientific American *link*.
Our paper on the Concord, MA flora and its response to climate change was published in PNAS and covered by the New York Times *link*, the Boston Globe *link*, and the HarvardScience web page *link*.
Our research on the Concord, MA flora and its response to climate change was recently mentioned in Science. This work is in collaboration with Charles Willis, Charles C. Davis, Abraham Miller-Rushing, and Richard Primack.
In the summer of 2007 I was a teaching assistant for the Harvard Summer Schools Biodiversity of Borneo course. Click *here* for an article about this course featured on the HarvardScience web page.
June 2020. Happy to announce the launch of the the launch of the Tennessee-Kentucky Plant Atlas! [link]
April 2019. A BIG congratulations to Nick Koenig! He was just selected as a 2019 Barry Goldwater Scholar, the first to be selected from EKU since 2011.
April 2019. EKU students Calvin Andries and Nick Koenig are headed to the ASB meeting in Memphis, TN to present their work. Calvin will be presenting his work on the flora of three wetlands in the Red River Gorge [link] , and Nick will present a poster on the EKU Herbaria, including an update on the digitization process of our NSF grant [link].
Jan 2019. Excited to start my new position as Collections Manager (and eventually Research Scientist) at the University of Michigan Herbarium.
Sept 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the EKU College of Science Travel Award to present at ASB in Spring 2019!
July 2018. Thomas McFadden successfully defends his Master's Thesis on the Vascular Flora of the Red River Gorge in Powell, Menifee, and Wolfe Counties Kentucky. Congratulations Thomas!
June 2018. Our NSF Grant was funded! Imperiled plants of tropical rivers: phylogeny, biogeography, and systematics of Podostemaceae. This work is in collaboration with C.T. Philbrick and C.P. Bove.
June 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the Kentucky Society of Natural History Student Research grant for his work on the Vascular Flora of Wetlands in the Red River Gorge Geological Area and Clifty Wilderness in Menifee and Powell Counties of Kentucky.
April 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the Kentucky Native Plant Society Student Research grant for his work on the Vascular Flora of Wetlands in the Red River Gorge Geological Area and Clifty Wilderness in Menifee and Powell Counties of Kentucky.
March 2018. Congrats to Calvin Andries on receiving the Society of Herbarium Curators Undergraduate Research grant for his work on the Vascular Flora of Wetlands in the Red River Gorge Geological Area and Clifty Wilderness in Menifee and Powell Counties of Kentucky.
May 2017. Congrats to Calvin Andries and Nicholas Koenig! Calvin received the the Robert S. Lawrence award in Botany and Nick received the David Eakin Outstanding Freshman award. Both awards are from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences.
Feb 2017. Just back from the Kentucky Organization of Field Stations (https://kentuckyfieldstations.wordpress.com/) meeting at Maywoods where I gave a talk on using Symbiota portals to manage species lists.
Jan 2017. Congratulations to Thomas McFadden for receiving the Kentucky Native Plant Society student research grant (http://www.knps.org/grants.html) for his work on the flora of the Red River Gorge.
July 2016. Excited to be off to the Botany 2016 conference. Check out our Collections Education abstract *here* and some nifty work on glacial relicts in Draba *here*.
May 2016. Thomas McFadden and I took part in the NSF-Funded Workshop on Herbarium Techniques at University of Georgia Herbarium. See a summary *here*.
May 2016: Congratulations to undergraduate Thomas McFadden... times two! Thomas received the 2016 Outstanding Senior Award from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. Recipients of this award demonstrate the following: consistently excellent scholarship; involvement in scientific organizations or clubs which reinforce career interests; special recognition or awards; leadership and service activities involving other biology students; a mature attitude toward pursuing a career in the biological sciences. Thomas also was accepted into the EKU Master of Science in Biology program and received a Graduate Assistantship position from the EKU Biology department. Thomas and I are currently developing his project which will focus on the flora of Kentucky.
January 2016: NSF preliminary proposal submitted, ASB abstract submitted, and Plant Systematics and General Botany classes off to a good start. Two independent student research projects start next week. Work on the digitization of the EKU herbarium rolls on. Not a bad start to the new year!
November 2015: Congratulations to Glen Kalisz and Lameace Hussain. Their poster won second place in the KAS meeting research competition.
October 2015: Congratulations to Glen Kalisz who just received the Kentucky Native Plant Society Student Research Grant for his work on forest regeneration at the EKU Maywoods Environmental and Educational Laboratory.
October 2015: Looking forward to our presentations at the Kentucky Academy of Science meeting on November 13-14, 2015. Thomas McFadden will be presenting on The Vascular Flora of Taylor Fork Ecological Area, Madison County, Kentucky, and Glen Kalisz and Lameace Hussain will present their work on Incorporating the plant collections of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission into the Ronald L. Jones Herbarium at Eastern Kentucky University.
October 2015: Headed to the second annual Kentucky Botanical Symposium. Looking forward to some great talks dealing with the Conservation, Restoration and Landscape in the Bluegrass.
September 2015: Great press release *link* for our herbarium digitization workflows paper. Check out the paper here *link*
September 2015: Headed to the iDigBio Managing Natural History Collections Data for Global Discoverability Workshop at Arizona State University *link*
July 2015. Honored to have our project on Connecting Students to Citizen Science and Curated Collections *link* mentioned by Dr. Tom Ranker, President of ASPT, in his annual address to the ASPT Banquet at Botany 2015. His talk was on Teaching Plant Systematics Today: Classic Techniques & Novel Approaches.
July 2015: Wish I was headed to Botany 2015 but there is too much going on this summer. Some of our work is being presented there however. Check out our abstracts on Connecting Students to Citizen Science and Curated Collections *link* and the Phylogenomics of Viridiplantae using plastid genome sequence data *link*.
May 2015: Headed to Gainsville, FL for the SPNCH meeting, a Symbiota workshop and a presentation on our student plant collection project *link*. And then back to EKU to teach the new Field Botany Summer course at Maywoods. A great (and busy!) start to the summer.
May 2015: Congratulations to undergraduate Thomas Mcfadden who received the Robert S. Larance Memorial Endowed Scholarship from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This award recognizes students who have a strong interest and achievement in the areas of botany and/or the field sciences.
May 2015: Congratulations to undergraduate Lameace Hussain who received the LaFuze Scholarship in Biology from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This award is the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship awarded by the Department of Biological Sciences at EKU. Recipients must have attained a distinguished scholastic record and show strong evidence of potential for developing a career in the biological sciences.
May 2015: Congratulations to undergraduate Glen Kallisz who received the Arthur and Frieda Bingham Prize from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This scholarship is awarded to a rising sophomore or junior who, as a major in Biology (not enrolled in the pre-med emphasis) has demonstrated outstanding academic performance.
January 2015: Headed to the iDigBio Herbarium Workflow Workshop at Valdosta State *link*
January 2015: Our paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology on the phylogeny of all green plants was one of the top 5 downloaded articles for 2014 and one of the top 10 articles in the journal for 2014 ! *link*
November 2014: Congratulations to undergraduate WIlliam Ciocca who won first place for his oral presentation in the Botany section at the annual meeting of the Kentucky Academy of Sciences.
August 2014: Our NSF TCN Grant was funded! Check out the EKU press release here *link* and the iDigBio press release here *link*
July 2014: Just back from Botany 2014. Check out our Podostemaceae phylogeny abstracts here: *link* and here: *link*
July 2014: Also at Botany 2014: I attended the Small Herbarium Digitization Workshop put on by iDigBio and NANSH. Link summary of the event here *link*
June 2014: Abstract from Evolution 2014. Organellar phylgenomics of green plants *link*
May 2014: Congratulations to undergraduate William Ciocca who received the Robert S. Larance Memorial Endowed Scholarship from the EKU Department of Biological Sciences. This award recognizes students who have a strong interest and achievement in the areas of botany and/or the field sciences.
May 2014: Check out some great pictures from the Spring Flora Floracliff workshop *link*
April 2014: Congratulations to undergraduate Thomas McFadden. His proposal to conduct a flora of the Taylor Fork Natural Area at EKU was funded by the Natural Areas Research Committee.
March 2014: Our research on the phylogeny of all green plants is featured the BMC online magazine Biome (no longer available) and the EKU University News *link*
Sept 2013: Had a great time at the Kentucky Native Plant Society meeting at the Land Between the Lakes. Check out this post by the Sewanee Herbarium *link*
June 2013: Our paper on the phylogeny of the clusioid clade and the placement of the ancient rosid fossil Paleoclusia is out now in IJPS *link*
April 2013: Just back from the ASB iDigBio Digitization Symposium and Workshop... great stuff! Lots of ideas for the herbarium at EKU.
April 2013: I will be presenting our work on resolving the phylogeny of all green plants (Viridiplantae) using plastid genome data at the ASB meeting in Charleston, WV.
April 2013: Evolution 2013 abstract posted. Dynamic variation in rates of body mass evolution in birds.
March 2013: Botany 2013 abstract posted. Does the evidence really support an Amborella sister hypothesis for flowering plants?
February 2013: Very happy to have been selected as a recipient of the 2012-13 College of Arts & Sciences Junior Faculty Summer Research Award!
February 2013: Graduate student Heidi Braunreiter receives support from the Kentucky EPSCoR Research Scholars Program. Her project: Resolving the Evolutionary History of the New World Riverweeds (Podostemaceae).
October 2012: Our paper on the phylogeny of Malpighiales is out now in PNAS *link*
October 2012: I will be presenting a talk on our recent work on the phylogeny of the green plant clade (Viridiplantae) at the the Kentucky Academy of Science annual meeting on Oct. 20th. The meeting is being held this year at EKU.
August 2012: Excited to have accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University!
March 2012: Looking forward to the Botany 2012 meetings in Columbus, OH. My home state! I will be giving a talk titled From algae to angiosperms - inferring the phylogeny of green plants (Viridiplantae) from 360 plastid genomes. I also helped out with a poster titled The evolution of the phytochrome gene family in mosses.
I will be helping teach the course Phylogenetics - new applications, pitfalls and challenges at the EES Summer School, in Frauenchiemsee, Germany, in August 2011; with Professors Alexandros Stamatakis, John Wiens, and many others.
June 2011: Just arrived at my new posdoctoral position in the Soltis Lab at the University of Florida.
Jan 2011: The first chapter of my dissertation concerning the phylogeny of the clusioid clade has been published in the American Journal of Botany.
Nov 2010: Great news! The first chapter of my dissertation concerning the phylogeny of the clusioid clade has been tentatively accepted for publication in the American Journal of Botany.
Feb 2010: A follow-up to our 2008 Concord study links climate change to invasive species success and was published in PLoS ONE *link*. This publication was featured as a Research Highlight in Nature and covered by the Boston Globe *link1*,*link2*, Boston Public Radio *link*, the Harvard Crimson *link*, the Harvard Gazette *link*, Harvard Magazine *link*, and Scientific American *link*.
Our paper on the Concord, MA flora and its response to climate change was published in PNAS and covered by the New York Times *link*, the Boston Globe *link*, and the HarvardScience web page *link*.
Our research on the Concord, MA flora and its response to climate change was recently mentioned in Science. This work is in collaboration with Charles Willis, Charles C. Davis, Abraham Miller-Rushing, and Richard Primack.
In the summer of 2007 I was a teaching assistant for the Harvard Summer Schools Biodiversity of Borneo course. Click *here* for an article about this course featured on the HarvardScience web page.