Vermont EPSCoR Newsletter - Fall 2016




IN THIS ISSUE
  VT EPSCoR Updates
  BREE News
  RACC News
  CWDD News
  NEWRnet
  Private Sector News
  Awards
  Publications
  Events

From the Director

Judith Van Houten, PhD.
We are very excited to announce the RII Track-1, Lake Champlain Resilience to Extreme Events (BREE) award from the National Science Foundation.  In this e-Newsletter you will find many articles that describe this new effort which aims to inform public policy and support economic and workforce development in Vermont.

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  • BREE Press Conference Photos and Articles
  • BREE All Hands Meeting
  • BREE Job Openings


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  • 2016 RACC Retreat
  • 2016 RACC IAM Mediated Modeling Workshop


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  • 2016 Scholarship Awardees!
  • 2016 RACC Undergraduate Intern Orientation
  • RACC Vermont and Puerto Rico School Exchange
  • CWDD Outreach: Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax Middle School 7th Grade


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  • 2016 NEWRnet Annual Meeting
  • NEWRnet Outreach: Harwood Union Middle School 7th Grade


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  • VT EPSCoR: 2017 - 2018 Vermont EPSCoR SBIR/STTR Phase (0) Awards
  • VT EPSCoR: 2017 - 2018 Vermont EPSCoR Pilot Awards
  • Congratulations to the VT EPSCoR 2016 SBIR/STTR Travel Award Winners
  • Mamava wins VT EPSCoR sponsored InnovateHER VT, the $10,000 Business Pitch Event in Burlington
  • Wheel Pad Wins VT EPSCoR Innovate Cash Prize


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  • Dr. Ibrahim Mohammed
  • Dr. Peter Isles
  • Dr. Yu-shiou Tsai
  • More


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  • UVM President and Provost Dedicate Display Celebrating Faculty Talent and Achievement
  • Dr. Donna Rizzo Inducted into the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Dr. George Pinder Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Leading Professional Association
  • NEWRnet PhD Student Matthew Vaughan Awarded Research Grant
  • Dr. Arne Bomblies Receives Tenure at UVM
  • Dr. Alan Betts is the First Recipient of the Bert Bolin Award from AGU
  • UVM Spinoff Company (also received VT EPSCoR Funding) Honored as One of Nation’s Top Start-Ups at Washington, DC Ceremony


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  • Development and Evaluation of High-Resolution Climate Simulations over the Mountainous Northeastern United States
  • The Shape of Watershed Governance: Locating the Boundaries of Multiplex Networks
  • Characterization of increased persistence and intensity of precipitation in the northeastern United States
  • More


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  • Feb 6 & 7, 2017 - Alan Alda Communicating Science Workshop - Save the Date!
  • 04/12/2017 - CAPS 2017 Complexity-Based Analytics and Policies for Social Good
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    Vermont EPSCoR Wins $20 Million Award From National Science Foundation To Study and Promote Resiliency in Lake Champlain Basin
    Research Will Inform Public Policy, Support Economic and Workforce Development
    
    
    What makes some parts of the Lake Champlain Basin and its watersheds resilient in the face of extreme weather events, increasingly common in a warming Vermont, while other parts fail to recover and rebound?
     
    A $20 million award from the National Science Foundation to Vermont EPSCoR will help answer that question, providing much needed information to decision-makers as they govern the basin and develop policies that reach far into the future.
     
    The award, one of the largest in Vermont history, was announced by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and University of Vermont president Tom Sullivan at press conference at the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain on April 18.
    
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    Andrew Schroth Wins New NSF Award to Study Phosphorus-Iron Dynamics in Sediment and Water - A key driver of algal blooms
    Dr. Andrew Schroth, VT EPSCoR Science Leader and Research Assistant Professor of Geology at the University of Vermont, has been awarded a three-year award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study phosphorus (P) loading from lake sediments in Lake Champlain. The collaborative award that will have implications for freshwater systems also includes Dr. Greg Druschel, Adjunct Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Vermont and Associate Professor, Earth Sciences, at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. 
    
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    RACC Member Beverley Wemple Receives Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant
    Dr. Beverley Wemple, Associate Professor, Department of Geography at the University of Vermont was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant for 2016-17. Dr. Wemple will be continuing a project that she started in 2013 (Mazar River Project) and studying geomorphology of mountain rivers on the eastern cordillera of the Andes in Ecuador to construct the first hydraulic geometry for rivers of this region. 
    
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    Dr. Arne Bomblies appointed Senior Associate Project Director for VT EPSCoR
    VT EPSCoR and the VT Technology Council are very pleased to announce that Dr. Arne Bomblies has been appointed Senior Associate Project Director for VT EPSCoR at the University of Vermont. 
     
    Dr. Bomblies has an outstanding career of research, teaching and leadership. He joined the University of Vermont in 2009 and is currently Associate Professor in the School of Engineering. His research foci are broadly centered on the impacts of climate change and variability. Within this context, there are two specific focus areas of Dr. Bomblies’ research: disease/climate connections and regional adaptation to climate change. 
    
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    RACC Team Contributes to Groundbreaking Environmental Law Publication
    Contact Maryellen Apelquist
    Director of Communications, VT Law School
    mapelquist@vermontlaw.edu
    
    
    RACC faculty and stakeholders authored twelve of nineteen articles featured in the Spring 2016 Vermont Journal of Environmental Law.  Articles covered topics from “A Natural and Human History of Lake Champlain” to “The Lake Champlain Basin as a Complex Adaptive System: Insights from the Research on Adaptation to Climate Change “RACC” Project” and “Controlling Polluted Stormwater Runoff from Roads”.
    
    The Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (VJEL) at Vermont Law School announced the publication of a timely new set of information and perspectives on the Lake Champlain restoration plan recently approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the federal Clean Water Act. 
    
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    VT EPSCoR Mentoring & Teaching of Diversity Workshop
    April 30, 2016 at UVM's Davis Center
    
    Vermont EPSCoR held a Mentoring & Teaching of Diversity workshop at the UVM Davis center on Saturday April 30th, 2016. The goals of the workshop were to enrich knowledge about diversity and cultural identities and their impacts. Strategies and approaches for developing a more just & inclusive environment were also reviewed. 
    
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    2016 Vermont EPSCoR Student Research Symposium
    March 29, 2016 at the Hilton Hotel - Burlington
    
    The CWDD was excited to showcase the innovative discoveries of over 54 posters and 8 oral presentations from student researchers through the Research on Adaptation to Climate Change (RACC) program at the 8th annual Student Research Symposium on Tuesday March 29th, 2016. Over 170 people attended. This symposium brings everyone together who has worked for the past year on countless aspects of research. 
    
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    Dr. Peter Isles and Dr. Justin Guilbert - Successful Dissertation Defenses
    Congratulations to Dr. Peter Isles and Dr. Justin Guilbert for their successful dissertation defenses! Peter and Justin did outstanding jobs in both their oral and written components. 
    
    
    Mike Winslow named Coordinator, VT EPSCoR Center for Workforce Development & Diversity at Saint Michael's College
    VT EPSCoR is very happy to welcome Mike Winslow as the Coordinator of the VT EPSCoR Center for Workforce Development & Diversity at Saint Michael's College(CWDD).
    
    Mike has an outstanding career in environmental advocacy, research and teaching. For the past 15 years, he worked as a staff scientist for the Lake Champlain Committee and authored Lake Champlain: A Natural History.
    
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    2016 Alan Alda Communicating Science Workshop
    February 1-2, 2016 at UVM's Davis Center.
    
    The second Alan Alda Workshop on Communicating Science was held at the University of Vermont on February 1st and 2nd, 2016. Twenty-five faculty, graduate students and post-doctoral associates from across the disciplines and various institutions in Vermont participated in the one and a half day interactive workshop. There were also two larger plenary sessions with about 75 attendees. Through improvisational methods and story-telling exercises developed by the Alda Center, the participants practiced and developed new techniques to help communicate sometimes highly technical research concepts to a wide audience including the broader public and non-experts outside their specific field of study. The workshop culminated with a session on video messaging allowing each participant to record a short video on an aspect of their research.
    
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