Research Opportunities

Biodiversity and Environmental Restoration

Walker Ashley

• Human-environment interactions
• Land use change
• Impacts of severe storms on human/built environments are encouraged

Scott Grayburn

• Microbial degradation of plastic from bags
  • Preparation of different growth media to optimize microbial attachment
  • Measurement of adhesion and plastic degradation
• Use of algae as a source of biofuels
  • Recovery of oil from algae for biodiesel
  • Recovery of cellulose from algae for ethanol
• Isolation of viruses that infect freshwater algae
  • Purification of viruses by formation of plaques that follow algae infection
  • Characterization of virus DNA

Mitchell Irwin

• Exploring how lemurs respond to habitat degradation in Madagascar
• Entering and managing datasets from Madagascar
• Parasitology or nutrition

Holly Jones

• Intersection between climate change and restoration
• Explore how ecosystems work and their underlying ecology
• Enhancement of environmental stewardship
• How best to prioritize restoration
• Exploring links between ecosystem restoration/conservation
• Human well-being in the face of global climate change
• Maximizing restoration gains
• Investigating restoration trajectories at the local, regional, and global scale

Rich King

• Biodiversity monitoring
• Inventory work at area forest preserves

Mike Konen

• Investigate human impacts on soils, hydrologic properties and landscapes.
• Agricultural, restored prairie and never cultivated prairie and savanna sites at Nachusa Grasslands and comparable locations in the region

Karen Samonds

• Prepare, identify, and describe subfossils from Madagascar
  • As small mammal communities are correlated with major habitat types, this data is useful for making paleoenvironmental reconstructions.

Wes Swingley

• Integrating microbial processes with environmental changes, especially in extreme systems
  • man-made waste sites
  • early Earth or extraterrestrial environments analogs
• Culturing, microscopy and biochemical characterization
• Modern sequencing and sequence analysis
  • including DNA isolation
  • amplification and high-throughput sequence parsing and analysis

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Energy Studies

Kevin Martin

• Development of urban electric vehicles
• Passive solar tracking systems
• Renewable energy analysis and modeling of integrated wind, solar, biomass and fuel cell systems

William Mills

• Energy auditing concepts
• Spectrally enhanced lighting and LED luminaire design
• Application specific energy reductions from VFDs
• Passive solar tracking system

Nicholas Pohlman

• Explore the heat transfer capabilities of biomass
• Work with pneumatic conveyance systems to explore reasons for particle drop-out
• Heat transfer rates and design of a cook stove using ceramic parts
• Finding the right material mixtures that can withstand the high heat
  • Once fabricated, tests of heat transfer and biochar

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Environmental Policy

Anna Klis

• Database of legal mechanisms in environmental treaties
• Mouse erythroleukemia cell line (MEL)
• Water and climate benefits of growing potatoes instead of rice

Colin Kuehl

• Water conservation
• Global environmental agreements

Brendon Swedlow

• Politics of environmental
• Health and safety regulations

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Nature in Society

Giovanni Bernardo

• Exploring ways to increase the presence of social science research in the worldwide discourse about sustainability.
• Climate change stressors on farmers' decision making in the US Midwest (including Northern Illinois).

Andy Bruno

• Conducting environmental history
• Knowledge of the Russian language

Jason Hanna

• Environmental ethics
• Moral dimensions of climate change

Emily McKee

• Water conservation
• International water disputes
• Middle East studies
• Alternative agriculture
• Assist in coordinating and hosting research workshop with Northern IL farmers
• Collection of data on farmers' market sales and CSA memberships
• Literature review of desalination research
• English-only speakers, as well as those with Hebrew or Arabic proficiency, are welcome.

Water Sciences

Phil Carpenter

• Environmental Geophysics
• Engineering Geology
• Seismology

Emily McKee

• Water conservation
• International water disputes
• Middle East studies
• Alternative agriculture
• Assist in coordinating and hosting research workshop with Northern IL farmers
• Collection of data on farmers' market sales and CSA memberships
• Literature review of desalination research
• English-only speakers, as well as those with Hebrew or Arabic proficiency, are welcome.

Tomoyuki Shibata

• Conducting collaborative public health-related research
• Scientific engagement
• Capability building activities
• Conducts Sustainable Development Goals

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