Lab News and Accomplishments

Jan 2018: Three-summer researcher River Pasquale, Eureka! extern, has been accepted into her top-choice college, and will be attending Sarah Lawrence next year! Congratulations!

Dec 2017: Luis Aguirre receives a $1000 Predissertation Research Grant from the Graduate School!

Nov 2017: George LoCascio wins first prize for the best oral presentation at the Life Sciences Graduate Symposium!!

Sept 2017: Eugene Amponsah is on the front page of the UMass website for his participation in the Summer Scholars CAFE program! Check it out here

Aug 2017: Media coverage for Evan Palmer-Young's new PLoS One paper! Read it about it here.

June 2017: George LoCascio received a $2000 scholarship from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts!

May 2017: Muvari Tjiurutue, who received her PhD from the Adler lab in 2016, has been made Head of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Namibia - wow! She's also received an early academic career grant by the Commonwealth Association, UK, for travel to a conference. Go Muvari!

May 2017: Adler lab undergraduate superstar Kristen Michaud accepted an REU position at UC Santa Barbara for the summer, where she will learn about marine ecosystems... and maybe surfing?

April 2017: Jess Leslie wins the Kofi Cash award, a coveted Biology department scholarship for top research excellence. Very much deserved! Jess will begin a summer research position with Robin Hopkins at the Arnold Arboretum after graduating.

April 2017: Matt Boyer is in the news for his participation in the Science March in Boston. You can listen here

Spring 2017: Julie Davis kicks some butt! She received a Research Award Fellowship from the Commonwealth College to support her continued work in the lab this spring, a Maureen Flanagan scholarship that will pay her costs to attend the Ecological Society of America meeting this summer, and a Richardson scholarship. Go Julie!

March 2017: Laura Doubleday's first thesis chapter is accepted for publication in Ecology and Evolution!

January 2017: Luis Aguirre received a $3000 PGAV Destinations Pollinator Research Grant for his work studying how leaf damage affects floral chemistry and bee disease. Hurray!

January 2017: Luis Aguirre and George Locascio received Lotta Crabtree fellowships that will support them in Fall 2017. Congratulations to both of them!

Fall 2016: Kristen Michaud received a Research Award Fellowship from the Commonwealth College to support her continued work in the lab this fall!

June 2016: Jess Leslie received a $1000 William and Margaret Nutting Scholarship from the Biology Department! These are competitive scholarships "to recognize and reward achievement of excellence by an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts in the biological sciences." Congratulations, Jess!

May 2016: George LoCascio is famous! Read about it here.

April 2016: George LoCascio received a $2000 Big Y Scholarship and a $2000 Horticultural Club of Boston scholarship towards his academic studies next year!

March 2016: Let's all congratulate Dr. Muvari Tjiurutue on a successful defense! Muvari will begin a faculty position at the University of Namibia after finishing the semester here.

March 2016: Kristen Michaud received a $5000 Biology Summer Research Fellowship and a CAFE summer scholarship! These awards will support her independent research asking how floral traits affect disease transmission in bumble bees.

Feb 2016: Muvari Tjiurutue's first thesis chapter has been published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology. Hurray!

Dec 2015: Graduate students Matt Boyer and Evan Palmer-Young have both received nationally-competitive, two-year USDA predoctoral fellowships that will fund the rest of their PhD work.

May 2015: Adler lab graduating seniors are sweeping the biology awards this year! Jonathan Giacomini received the Kofi Cash award and an Outstanding Research award. Caitlin McAllister received an Outstanding Research award. Taylor Conroy received an Outstanding Student in Biology award. Congratulations to all of them!

April 2015: Muvari Tjiurutue received a renewal of her Faculty for the Future fellowship, which will fund her for the completion of her dissertation work.

Feb 2015: A chapter of Laura Doubleday's published in the Annals of Botany (2013 100: 2280-92) is highlighted as being 'of special interest' in a new review of the chemical ecology of plant-pollinator interactions (Current Opinion in Plant Science 2015).

Jan 2015: Evan Palmer-Young received a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant!

Jan 2015: Matt Boyer received a renewal of his Lotta Crabtree fellowship, which will fund his spring semester.

Sept 2014: Scott McArt began a Research Scientist position at Cornell University. He is running his own lab and encourages inquiries from potential graduate students...

Aug 2014: Taylor Conroy has received a Commonwealth College Honors Research grant for his honors thesis work asking how nutritional limitations affect Crithidia infection in bumble bees.

Aug 2014: Ali Hogeboom has been offered a full-time position as a terrestrial ecologist at the NSF-funded NEON project, which she will begin in September.

May/June 2014: Melissa Ha completed her Master's degree and has achieved her dream of a tenure-track position teaching at a community college! She begins at Mohave Community College in August. Congratulations, Melissa - you will be missed!

May 2014: Sara Connon received the Nauset Garden Club Scholarship!

April 2014: Muvari Tjiurutue received a prestigious international Faculty for the Future fellowship from the Schlumberger Foundation! This fellowship will support her in the coming year. She is one of 84 women worldwide to receive a new award this year.

April 2014: Caitlin McAllister won the Maureen Flanagan Scholarship Endowment.

March 2014: Evan Palmer-Young received the Garden Club of America Pollinator Fellowship for this year! He has also received a University Graduate Research grant.

May 2013: Melissa Ha has received a Student Travel Award from the Botanical Society of America to present her Master's work at the annual meeting. In addition, Melissa Ha and Laura Doubleday have both received OEB research grants, and Matt Boyer has received a Natural History Collections research grant to support their research.

Nov 2012: Nicole Soper-Gorden successfully defended her PhD on the same day her first thesis chapter was accepted at the American Journal of Botany. A good day! She leaves shortly for an NSF-funded postdoctoral position with Project Baseline at the University of Minnesota-Duluth working with Julie Etterson.

Spring 2012: Laura Doubleday received both a University Fellowship and a three-year Canadian NSERC fellowship to support her PhD research at UMass, which will start in Sept 2012. Matt Boyer received Honorable Mention for his National Science Foundation Fellowship application.

July 2011: Nick Barber has finished his last cucumber experiment, and is leaving for an Assisant Professor position at Northern Illinois University. We will miss him and I'm sure he'll miss the fresh vegetables.

Spring 2011: Evan Palmer-Young received both a University Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Fellowship to support his PhD research at Amherst, and Matt Boyer was awarded a Lotta Crabtree Fellowship from the university.

April 2011: Sandy Gillespie successfully defended her PhD, and is soon departing for a postdoctoral position with Neal Williams at UC Davis.

Jan 2011: Former postdoc Dr. Toby Kiers received "Meervoud grant" from NWO to support women in science. It offers 340,000 euros! Read more about it (in Dutch) here.

Nov 2010: Sandy Gillespie won the President’s Prize competition for her talk at the Canadian Entomological Society meeting for the 2nd consecutive year.

Oct 2010: Former postdoc Dr. Toby Kiers received 5 years of funding with a Dutch Vidi grant, and a tenure track position at Vrije University. Read more about it here.

Sept 2010: Muvari Tjiurutue joined the lab with two years of support from a Fulbright Fellowship.

July 2010: Nicole Soper Gorden has been awarded a Travel Grant from the Plant Population Ecology section to present her research at the August 2010 Ecological Society of America conference. Nicole will be a SEEDS mentor at the conference, and official student liaison to ESA's Education and Diversity programs.

May 2010: Nicole Soper Gorden has been awarded a Gilgut Fellowship from the Plant Biology Graduate program that will fund her fourth year of graduate school. This is a competitive award and honor in her program.

May 2010: Nick Barber's collaborative research has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Check out his webpage for more details...

April 2010: What an amazing month! Nicole Soper Gorden has been awarded an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant; hers was one of 12 proposals ranked 'highly competitive' out of 140 proposals total. Additionally, former Adler lab members Jen Fill and Ryder Diaz both received NSF GRFP Fellowships! Congratulations, all.

May 2009: Nelson Milano received two competitive fellowships in Entomology, the Burrell Memorial scholarship and the Frank R. Shaw Award Fund scholarship. Congratulations, Nelson!

April 2009: Nina Theis has accepted a tenure-track position at Elms College that will begin in Fall 2009. We will miss you, Nina!

Aug 2008: Andy Cavanagh successfully defended his Master's degree in Entomology. Congratulations, Andy!

May 2008: Lynn Adler, Ruth Hazzard and former post-doc Toby Kiers have a 3-year USDA NRI grant to study effects of above- and belowground mutualists and antagonistics on reproduction in cucumber that has been recommended for funding. More ice cream!

May 2008: Jen Fill had to decide between floods of acceptances for summer REU internships. She ultimately chose to work at Konza Praire in Kansas. You can read the chronicles of her adventures on her web page.

April 2008: Nicole Soper Gorden has been awarded $2600 from the Jane Hallenbeck Bemis Endowment scholarship from the UMass-Amherst Natural History Collections to conduct her summer research on jewelweed, its herbivores and pollinators.

Feb 2008: Sandy Gillespie's NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant has been recommended for funding! This is a nationally-competitive grant for PhD students and will provide research funds for the rest of Sandy's dissertation. Congratulations!

Feb 2008: Jen Fill has been selected for a competitive Howard Hughes Medical Institute scholarship for the research she will conduct this semester in collaboration with Holly Baltzer. Hurray Jen!

Dec 2007: Drs. Lynn Adler, Paige Warren (UMass-NRC Dept), and Rebecca Irwin (Dartmouth College, Dept of Biological Sciences) have received a 3-year NSF grant to study how urbanization affects natural selection via plant-insect interactions in Gelsemium sempervirens. Bring on the ice cream!
You can view a UMass article on the grant here.

Aug 2007: Liz Andrews' honors thesis appears as a publication in the Journal of Chemical Ecology, with Drs. Nina Theis and Lynn Adler as co-authors.

July 2007: Amanda Lentz successfully defended her PhD in the Department of Biology at Virginia Tech. Congratulations!

Mar 2007: In addition to the renewal of her Lotta Crabtree Fellowship, Sandy Gillespie received a three-year fellowship from NSERC, the Canadian Research Council. This is a highly competitive national award. Congratulations Sandy! Sandy also received summer research funds from the Essex County Beekeeper's Association, and from a Jane Hallenbeck Bemis Endowment scholarship from the UMass-Amherst Natural History Collections.

Dec 2006: Kristen Hladun successfully defended her Master's. Congratulations Kristen! She will begin her PhD in the Dept of Entomology at UC Riverside in March 2007.

Sept 2006: Sandy Gillespie received a renewal of her Lotta M. Crabtree Fellowship from the College of Natural Resources and the Environment to fund the fall semester of research.

July 2006: Dr. Toby Kiers received a 3 year independent research 'Veni' Grant from Dutch Science Foundation: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). She will work with Dr. Marcel G. van der Heijden in the Institute of Ecological Sciences, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

May 2006: Liz Andrews received an Honor's Dean Award for excellence in her senior thesis research. Go Liz! Liz will be at UMass Amherst for one more year working towards her Master's degree in Entomology with Dr. Stephen Rich.

May 2006: Research by Lynn Adler and collaborator Rebecca Irwin of Dartmouth College is featured in a Science News article on nectar composition. Article PDF

March 2006: Liz Andrews received the Shaw Award for an outstanding undergraduate from the Entomology Division to purchase textbooks.

Jan 2006: Sandy Gillespie received a Lotta M. Crabtree Fellowship from the College of Natural Resources and the Environment to fund her spring semester of research.

Dec 2005: Dr. Nina Theis was awarded a $198,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the role of floral scent in attracting pollinators and herbivores of a wild gourd. This award will fund a postdoctoral position in the lab for the next two years.

Nov 2005: A recent paper by Dr. Lynn Adler and collaborator Dr. Rebecca Irwin (2005 Ecology 86(11): 2968-2978) was featured in ScienceNow online.

May 2005: Kristen Hladun received the Gilgut Award, a one-year competitive fellowship, through the Plant Biology Graduate Program. This fellowship will fund the rest of her Master’s degree.

May 2005: Dr. Toby Kiers received the nationally competitive Darwin Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Graduate Program in Organismal and Evolutionary Biology at UMass Amherst. Toby joined the Adler lab as a postdoc in August.

March 2005: Amanda Lentz received a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant on her first submission.