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E3B News:

Duncan Menge, E3B faculty member who will join in July 2013, has been named an Early Career Fellow of the Ecological Society of America for 2013-2017. ESA designates as Early Career Fellows of the Society certain members (typically chosen within 8 years of receiving the PhD) who have begun making and show promise of continuing to make outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by ESA. Congratulations! Please see Duncan Menge's new website HERE.

Jill Shapiro (EBHS Program advisor) and Matt Palmer (DUS and EB Program advisor) have each had a successful Major Review by the Promotion and Tenure Committe. The Executive Vice President's office of Arts and Sciences has promoted them both to the position of Senior Lecturer. Congratulations!

Please CLICK HERE for an end-of-semester update letter from E3B Chair, Ruth DeFries.

E3B lecturer, Elisa Bone has published a paper in the International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, entitled "First course at university: Assessing the impact of student age, nationality and learning style". This paper, written with Elisa's colleague Rob Reid, examines student performance in a large introductory Biology course at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and considered the influence of several factors including student learning styles and nationality. Please see link here

E3B MA Students presented their work on May 7, 2013, CLICK HERE for titles of the talks.

Ruth DeFries, Chair of E3B, and colleagues, including Maria Uriarte, E3B Professor and DGS, Marcia Macedo, E3B Alum, have work featured in The Phil Trans B issue on 'Ecology, economy, and management of an agro-industrial frontier landscape in the southeast Amazon' (April 2013). Please click here AND HERE.

Josh Drew, E3B M.A. Program advisor and lecturer, is co-author on a paper just published(April 3, 2013) in PLoS ONE. The article, Shark Tooth Weapons from the 19th Century Reflect Shifting Baselines in Central Pacific Predator Assemblies, here examines how shark communities changed over time periods that predate the written record in order to understand the magnitude of ecosystem changes in the Central Pacific. Many news organizations are writing about the work, from the BBC (here) and LA Times(here), to Fox News (here).

Don Melnick, the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Conservation Biology in E3B was named one of the Columbia Distinguished Faculty Award winners. A reception was held at Casa Italiana on Feb. 27, 2013. The awards were established in 2005 by University Trustee Gerry Lenfest (’58 LAW, ’09 HON) . The honorees are recognized for outstanding scholarship, teaching and service.

Matt Palmer, E3B Lecturer, and Krista McGuire, Barnard faculty and E3B affiliated faculty, are part of a team that has published a study of green roofs in New York City in PLOSone(March 2013), "Digging the New York City Skyline: Soil Fungal Communities in Green Roofs and City Parks". To read more, please click HERE.

Our Alumni Students in the News:

Kevin Olival, E3B alum, and E3B Affiliate at EcoHealth Alliance is co-author on a new paper in Emerging Infectious Diseases. click here This meta-analysis addresses the question of whether or not it's best to target zoonotic disease surveillance and viral discovery in sick vs. health wildlife. The answer is both, but surveillance of overtly "healthy" animals is critical for zoonotic pathogen discovery, especially for bats and rodents. Also, a couple of months ago, he published in the same journal evidence for Ebola virus in bats from Bangladesh. Please click here This work was also highlighted by the NY Times.

Mary Blair, E3B alum, is currently in Vietnam doing fieldwork, and writing a New York Times Scientist at Work Blog during the trip, click here.

Julia Pilowsky’s (CC '12) senior thesis work on vocal communication in African starlings (mentored by E3B's Dustin Rubenstein) was featured and published in the April 2013 edition of Animal Behaviour. For a link to the paper click HERE and for the feature piece (2nd article discussed) click HERE

Alicia Srinavas who received her M.A from the department in 2010 has recently published a short communication based on research conducted during her time as an E3B Masters student. The work deals with the distribution of certain bird species in the Peruvian Amazon. Click HERE to read the communication.

Interested in where our alumni PhD students are now?

The Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology (E3B) at Columbia University was established in 2001. Although we are a relatively new department, we have grown rapidly in the past decade. We now have an internationally diverse student body and a broad network of supporters at Columbia and throughout New York City. Our affiliated faculty members come from departments at Columbia as well as from, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the EcoHealth Alliance. Together we provide an unparalleled breadth and depth of research opportunities for our students. Read more.

Tropical Biology and Sustainability in Kenya

This global immersion experience will give students the opportunity to study ecology, evolutionary biology, conservation biology, environmental engineering, and sustainable development in the environmental hub of East Africa.

Click here for info, and here

E3B Seminar Series

Please join us again in September 2013 for our weekly Seminar Series on the 10th floor of Schermerhorn Extension building at 4PM each Tuesday. Have a great summer!

Department Phone:
(212) 854-9987

Department Fax:
(212) 854-8188

Email: e3b@columbia.edu

Address:

Columbia University
Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology (E3B)
10th Fl. Schermerhorn Ext.
1200 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10027

 

  

Department Chair:
Ruth DeFries

Academic Department Administrator:
Lourdes Gautier

Business Manager:
Maria Estrada-Werst

Administrative Coordinator:
Amy Kohn

Administrative Assistant:
Chiconia Anderson

Director of Graduate Studies:
Maria Uriarte

Director of Undergraduate Studies:
Matthew Palmer ENVB & Jill Shapiro EBHS

M.A. Program Advisor:
Joshua Drew

Post-bacc program Advisor:
Elisa Bone