Achievements

Rick Golightly

Wildlife

Dr. Rick Golightly received grant funding to support years 31 to 35 of a long-term project aimed at restoring and monitoring vulnerable seabird populations along the central California coast. Human use and disturbance at coastal areas where seabirds establish nests and raise their young has prompted a need for nest and human activity monitoring, which this work will address. Findings will inform programs that can minimize or eliminate disturbance, and ultimately conserve seabirds and their nesting colonies. 

Pascal Biwole

Environmental Resources Engineering

Professor Pascal Biwole co-authored the following recently published original research papers:

• Hygrothermal performance of wood-cement walls across various climate conditions, by Amer Bakkour, Salah-Eddine Ouldboukhitine, Pascal Biwole, and Sofiane Amziane, Materials and Structures, Volume 58 (8), February 2025.
• Multiple 3D particle tracking velocimetry for measuring airflow and pathogen trajectory in large indoor spaces, by Mohammed Umar Musa, Pascal Henry Biwole, and André Labbé, Building and Environment, Volume 271, 1 March 2025

Kendall Pargot

Biological Sciences

Kendall Pargot, Master's student in Biology (advisor Karen Kiemnec-Tyburczy) was awarded a conservation grant from the Northern California Herpetological Society to support her thesis research. The funds will be used to purchase cameras to record the nocturnal behavior of salamanders.

Andrew P Kinziger

Fisheries Biology

Coauthored and edited a special issue in Molecular Ecology Resources titled:  skúkum tílixam: Uniting to Support Indigenous Contributions to Molecular Ecology

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17550998/current

Daniel Barton

Wildlife

Dan Barton (Faculty, Wildlife) chaired the scientific program of an international joint conference between the Pacific Seabird Group and the Waterbird Society, held in San José, Costa Rica, in early January 2025. The bilingual meeting featured over 300 scientific presentations on seabird and waterbird biology and conservation by authors from over 40 countries.

Barbara Clucas

Wildlife

Dr. Barbara Clucas received Bureau of Land Management funding to support collaborative research with Texas A&M that will investigate common raven presence in Gunnison sage grouse (GUSG) habitat in Colorado. The GUSG is listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act, and this project seeks to understand what habitat features influence ravens, which are potential GUSG nest predators. Results of this study will inform more efficient and effective management of GUSG and their predators. 

Project collaborators include Israel Parker of Texas A&M and Aaron Facka of Wildlands Network and Cal Poly Humboldt Wildlife graduate student Leah Roll.

Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray

Environmental Studies

Dr. Ray joined grief scholars and movement leaders Breeshia Wade, Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Myrtle Sodhi, Jennifer England and host Viyda Shah on the podcast, Hospicing Leadership. This episode focused on questions such as "How do leaders create a vision for hospicing grief in the midst of crisis?" You can listen here: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading/podcast-episodes/hospicing-leadershi…

Jeff Kane and Pascal Berrill

Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management

Drs. Jeff Kane and Pascal Berrill received a $144,000 grant from the USDA Forest Service to support a study that will examine the effectiveness of variable tree thinning and prescribed burn treatments to promote fire and forest resilience in mixed-conifer forests of California. Research has consistently shown thinned tree stands to be more resilient to drought and wildfires, however, much remains to be learned about tree regeneration and growth in landscapes experiencing frequent low-to-moderate severity fires. This work will help to fill information gaps on interrelationships between prescribed fire dynamics, forest structural diversity, fuels, and vegetation response.

Kay Vargas and Dr. Sherrene Bogle

Computer Science

The NSF funded ACOSUS project has received another peer reviewed acceptance to present their findings in Phoenix Arizona at the  Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference. This publication includes Kay Vargas, a recent CS graduate now pursuing a PhD at University of California, Santa Cruz and research assistant of  Dr. Sherrene Bogle.

The citation is below:
Standfast*, J., Franco*, J.,  Carabello*, R., Vargas*, K., Wan, Y.,  Wang, X., Bogle, S., Aggarwal, P., &  Rayana, S., (2024) Deciding on a College Transfer: Uncovering Transition Queries and Concerns via Reddit Topic Modeling, DSI Annual Conference November 2024 Status = ACCEPTED

Hanna D. Hobbs, Lowen M. Hobbs, and Robert W. Zoellner

Chemistry

Two former undergraduate research students, now both in the U. S. Coast Guard, Hanna D. Hobbs and Lowen M. Hobbs, have published a peer-reviewed research article with Professor Emeritus Robert W. Zoellner entitled "The limits of copper oxidation states from density functional theory computations:  Fluoro-copper complexes, [CuFn]x+, where n = 1 through 6 and x = 3+ through 5-".  The citation is Hanna D. Hobbs, Lowen M. Hobbs, Robert W. Zoellner, Computational and Theoretical Chemistry 2024, 1242, 114942 (12 pages), to be published in December 2024.