The climate changes
Obfuscation o’er water?
Nations might be friends.
​
Marc Jeuland
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

​My dissertation research focuses on planned investments in water resources infrastructures under conditions of future economic and climatic uncertainty.  I use a simulation-based modeling approach to consider the range of plausible conditions that could affect complex water systems and potential development projects within them.  I develop an application to Nile Basin planning, and discuss different interpretations of the model results.

Species split and merge
As crust churns and bellows smoke.
Can we know, so deep?
​
Rob Young
University of California, Santa Cruz

​My thesis used genetic data from a hydrothermal vent tubeworm to infer migration patterns across transform faults on a mid-ocean ridge.  I also developed Bayesian statistical methods to detect hybrid populations and to test models describing ecological processes operating in these populations.

​Write, submit and wait.
You wonder who reads this stuff.
You’re published again!
​
Charles Maresca

​To give women rights
Could benefit society?
Shocking but true.
​
Amber Peterman
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

My dissertation is a three essay compilation focusing on economic and health gains from granting women inheritance and property rights, access to contraception and decreasing sexual violence in sub-Saharan Africa.

No normality
For stroke images are ill.
Beta regression
​
Christopher Swearingen
Medical University of South Carolina

My Biostatistics dissertation is advancing generalized linear modeling of a Beta distributed variable with application to acute ischemic stroke volume analysis.

Microsatellites
detecting populations,
gene flow, growth, decline

Kelly Barr
University of Louisiana

I studied the effects of landscape alteration and other such human-caused environmental changes on populations of an endangered songbird, the Black-capped Vireo (Vireo atricapilla) using genetic techniques.

​The peaceful don’t run
They stay, and get sucker-punched
Strong trees in the storm.
​
Myles Werntz
Baylor University

My dissertation focuses on religious pacifism in the late 20th century.  Looking at three thinkers who view religious pacifism as an alternate form of politics, I will explore what religious pacifism as an alternate power means, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Three church histories
Apostolic tradition
Development – how?
​
Scott Rushing
Baylor University

​My dissertation title is “The Apostolic Tradition in the Ecumenical Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Thodoret”.

​Eat or exercise?
What should Chinese people do?
They are getting fat!

Shuwen Ng
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

My work is on how the nutrition transition in emerging economies (such as China’s) affect people’s weight and health outcomes as the built environment urbanizes and diets change.

An experiment:
Design, write, rewrite, submit.
Repeat until done.
​
Will Eaton

​The letter’s the thing
Wherein we’ll catch their playing
With speech and poetry
Lauren Neefe
Stony Brook University

​My dissertation title is “Romantic Relays: Epistolary Play and Chimerical Form in Childe Herold’s Pilgrimage and Moby Dick”

​light wanes in water
antennae expand and change
green, brown stratify.

Julia Maresca
Pennsylvania State University

I studied the light-harvesting apparatus (antenna) of bacteria that live deep in lakes, and why those that make a brown-colored chlorophyll can live deeper in the water column, where there is less light, than those that make green-colored chlorophylls.

​basic or applied-
when Research is use-inspired
benefit blossoms

Nathaniel Logar
University of Colorado at Boulder

​My dissertation focuses on mechanisms that federal agencies use to tie their reserach priorities to the benefit of their users.  Research is more likely to lead to a positive outcome when decision makers incorporate the needs of users (ideally through direct participation) into the process when gathering intelligence on what research projects are possible, when evaluating projects, and when making prioritization decisisons.

Dig up deep sea mud
Give me your carbon and genes
Who lives and eats there?

Jennifer Biddle
Pennsylvania State University

​My dissertation was on the isotopic and genomic characterization of microbial populations in subseafloor sediments.

​Species lost and gained
Ocean food webs shaped like squares
Squirts, kelp, delicious.

Jarret Byrnes
UC Davis

​In the ocean, species are going extinct at global scales.  Locally, however, the number of species is often increasing due to invasions.  I found that, in both kelp forests and on docks, predator extinctions lead to a release of their prey.  At the same time, increases in prey diversity from invasions on docks (sea squirts and bryozoans) likely increased water filtration and ammonium excretion.

Bass change in the year
Red and white muscle fiber
Proportion keeps speed

John Sisson
University of Maine, Orono

​Thermal acclimation of striped bass show they change the proportions of red and white muscle fibers they have with temperature.  Since they are cold-blooded this allows them to swim at similar speeds in summer or winter.

​Binary fluids
Swirling, non linear flows,
Now I play Wall Street.

​Mark Steen
Duke University

​Fox on windy isle
For the good of your species
Make some babies, please?

Betsy Calkins
University of Massachusetts-Amherst

​I study reproduction in a captive breeding population of endangered island fox.

​Rocky shores pummeled
Animals strong hold or hide
thrive on cool splashing.

Moose O’Donnell

​I try to understand how the physical environment limits where plants and animals can live.  In my thesis, I studied how waves breaking on rocky shores influence the incredibly rich communities that live on the rocks.  Despite dangerously-high water velocities, many different organisms live in the most exposed spots on rocky shores.  I explored several aspects of the physical environment such as how the shape of the rock surface affects the forces that small organisms actually experience (crevices may actually cause the water to move with greater force), whether organisms could find protection from waves by hiding under other organisms (yes they can) and whether high wave forces may be beneficial (yes: by splashing water up the shore they can protect organisms from drying out during low tide).

​All birds flew once, all
Mighty eggs just the right size.
Why are none bigger?

Mike Dickison
Duke University

​Kiwi eggs are enormous, but not because they descend from giant flightless birds (in fact, their ancestors flew to New Zealand while still small). Their eggs are in fact just the right size, given they have a clutch size of one. Egg size does not seem to be what determines the maximum size of giant birds, and we still don’t know why birds never got as big as elephants.