Environmental Sciences Division

Student and Post-doctoral Research

(last updated 3/22/2011)

Fellowships Opportunities

Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education

Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship

DOE Krell Institute Fellowship Program

National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis

Post-doctoral research

2009: Peter Schweizer. PhD Ohio University (2008). Peter is interested in relationships between watershed landcover, water quality, and fish diversity. Peter developed mixed models to forecast how projected increases in biomass fuel production might influence fish biodiversity in the Midwest. His first paper, which required advanced statistical methods to represent the distribution of fish richness, is in review in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. Peter is also contributing to research to quantify risk to fishes in marine kinetic turbines with Mark Bevelhimer, Glenn Cada, and Vince Neary.

2001: Annett Sullivan, PhD in Geology, U. of Wyoming (1999) and ORNL Wigner Fellow. Annett developed a spatial reservoir model linked with CE-QUAL2 output to examine the ability of white sturgeon to avoid and, thus, survive, seasonal water quality deterioration in Brownlee Reservoir, near Boise, Idaho. Annett is a hydrologist with the USGS office in Portland, Oregon. Annett's homepage

Students involved in research

Fall 2010: Lin Shi, UG student from Knox College, Illinois contributed to our bioenergy research research at ORNL by developing PATH or structural equation models of fish richness in the Arkansas-White-Red river basin to better understand the direct and indirect influences of land cover on water quality and fish richness.

2009-10: T. Alex Perkins, PhD student from UC Davis conducted research at ORNL as part of the DOE Krell Institute fellowship program. Alex's research sought to understand how juvenile Snake River Chinook salmon use conditional strategies to adopt either a sub-yearling or yearling migration life history. Alex developed a model of life history choice and incorporated this into an age-based population viability analysis model. He developed and applied optimization methods to identify parameters most consistent with the observed proportions in each life histories across spawning areas and years, and summarized his results in a paper to appear soon in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

2008: Alexandre Lockhart, MS student from North Carolina State University, participated in the Snake River Chinook salmon project. Alex imputed missing temperatures and contributed to the development of a temperature-driven model for incubation in tributaries and mainstem spawning areas of the Snake River Hell's Canyon reach written in C.

2007: Kendall Ernst, BS student from Stanford U, worked on the Ogeechee River shortnose sturgeon project. Kendall implemented the SWAT model to Fort Stewart so that we could examine the effects of changes in military landuse practices. He started the calibration process for SWAT and compiled the spatial data needed to construct a 2D grid for the EFDC hydrodynamic model of the Ogeechee and Canoochee rivers in Georgia .

2007: Sarah Lewis, recent Oak Ridge High School graduate, conducted a literature search using ISI of water use efficiency in biomass crops and produced an Endnote bibliography and a database of relevant data.

2006: Emmanuel Isang, BS student in microbiology/pre-med at ETSU, conducted a literature search to support a life history analysis of fishes that focuses on the relationship between the number of years between spawning events and other costs associated with spawning, such as parental care and migration.

2005: Darrell Hoy, BS student in Mathematics, Dartmouth College, NH, developed a variation on tabu search optimization that we will use to optimize well placement to minimize damage to sage grouse populations. Darrell also helped to develop a graphical user interface using MFC for our white sturgeon PVA model.

2003: Liliya Hartman, BS student in Computer Science, Pennsylvania , helped to run simulations of hatchery operations (equalized family sizes stocked) and their effects on the demographic and genetic health of a wild population.

2002: Eric Carr , Post-MS (Math, University of Tennessee) coded the object-oriented "badger" landscape model used to evaluate brine spill effects in C++. This model served as the basis for, and was later generalized to represent a wide range of terrestrial life histories and is currently being generalized further to represent river habitats and aquatic species. Eric is a key member of the Tennessee Institute for Ecological Modeling and National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis . Eric's homepage

2001: Brian Maskarinec, BS in Math, U. Georgia, developed the skeleton for an object-oriented landscape model, reading an initial vegetation map and spatial disturbance data for fires, oil spills, and brine spills

2000: Brian Maskarinec, worked on our trout model to evaluate habitat use and its response to flow in a California stream.

ESD Research Staff Listing
Last Modified: February 15, 2011