Student Highlights

Sarah studies queen bumble bee overwintering physiology. She is currently exploring how and where a queen bumble bee overwinters influences her survival and energy usage while overwintering, and/or her fitness post-winter.

For her Ph.D., Eva plans to build on concepts from her master’s research using geophysical data to better understand groundwater systems, while adding additional complexity by working in hydrothermally active areas. This research seeks to increase understanding how hydrothermal systems recharge in the context of climate change and the global water cycle, as well as inform geothermal energy exploration and development.

For her master’s research, Erin is studying how birds communicate and compete for resources in the tropical rainforests of central Panama. In particular, Erin is interested in examining the vocal behavior of female birds and suboscines (birds in which song is innate rather than learned) as these groups are understudied.

Kristen’s Ph.D. research focuses on collecting and understanding emissions from oil and natural gas (ONG) production facilities. She is particularly interested in methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) because of their negative effects on global climate, air quality, and human health.

Ethan’s Ph.D. research focuses on atmospheric models. He has primarily been running and analyzing high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations over Wyoming to understand differing weather phenomena. More specifically, wildfire changes by the end of the century and extreme wind events over Wyoming.

In a course of her graduate research studies, Sourav is focused on understanding how sequence features contribute to structure and function in desiccation-tolerant intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). To explore this sequence-structure-function relationship, she is working on a Tardigrade-specific desiccation-tolerant protein.

Ryan’s research deals with tardigrades, a.k.a water bears, a.k.a the toughest animals on Earth. He wants to know how they are able to survive crazy conditions such as having almost no water in their bodies, turning into glass-like little balls, and then being thrown into space.

Greg Stark is a Ph.D. student at the University of Wyoming in the Department of Geology & Geophysics. Greg earned his B.S. in Geology from the University of Iowa in 2007, during which he studied magma degassing at Mt. St. Helens as part of his honors thesis.