Difference between revisions of "Grad-Invited Seminar Nominations for 2009-2010"
(New page: EEB Graduate Student Association {|border=1 cellpadding=8 |In order to nominate a speaker for the 2009-2010 Grad-Invited Seminar, create a section heading with that person's name ...) |
(No difference)
|
Revision as of 21:19, 3 February 2009
EEB Graduate Student Association
| In order to nominate a speaker for the 2009-2010 Grad-Invited Seminar, create a section heading with that person's name and institution, along with links to their personal webpage, a blurb about their research, etc. See the page from last year for examples. Deadline for nominations will be February 10. Voting will follow, and the decision should be made sometime in February. |
Todd Dawson, University of California, Berkeley
Todd is a Professor in the Integrative Biology Department at UCB, and adjunct Professor in the Environmental Science Policy and Management Department, and is also the Director for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry at Berkeley. He has large and dynamic lab, with a wide variety of interests and specialties. Broadly, his research focuses on plant ecophysiology, or the interface between plants and their environments. He uses a broad scope of ecological tools, and looks at systems from many angles- from the molecular level to the ecosystem level. He is also a very fun and lively person!
Todd's research interests from the UCB website: "Research in my laboratory focuses on the interface between plants and their environment. The tools of physiological and evolutionary plant ecology and stable isotope biogeochemistry are currently being applied towards the study and interpretation of this interface. Investigations draw upon a variety of physiological methods, modeling and the use of stable isotopes as avenues for improving our understanding of how the ecophysiological characteristics of plants are shaped by and respond to the environments they inhabit. Projects pay special attention to how aspects of plant form and function combine to permit adaptation to environmental variation, whether naturally or anthropogenically imposed, and how plants and their unique traits influence the structure and function of the communities and ecosystems they compose.
Current research themes include (1) exploring how the ecological and physiological characteristics of plants influence community and ecosystem processes (e.g. how the water, carbon and nutrient relations of plants may influence ecosystem hydrology and biogeochemistry); (2) elucidating the functional evolution and origin of adaptations in plants particularly with regards to how tolerance to low soil nutrient status, periodic drought, or low light and disturbance arises and the importance of evolutionary history in the origins of these adaptations; and (3) examining at the fluxes and exchanges of materials such as carbon, water and nitrogen between organisms and their biotic and abiotic environments using novel stable isotope techniques, Such an approach is proving to be especially powerful in looking at the origin of CO2 from different ecosystems and the exchange of water and nitrogen between plants and their fungal symbionts (mycorrhiza & endophytes) or their neighbors.
