A story on our research project on Arco, Budd, Deming, and Josephine lakes in Itasca State Park was featured in the publication “Upstream“. The publication is a newsletter for the Itasca Biological Station and Laboratories, which is a field station operated by the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences. The article highlights our work … Continue reading Itasca Research featured in “Upstream” publication
Dr. Swanner’s Microbial Ecology course (MICRO/BIOL/GEOL 487/587) drafted Wikipedia articles as part of a Wiki Education assignment. Topics were environmentally-significant microbial species. Below are some links to a few of the articles: Read about the genus Afifella, anaerobic bacteria living in shallow marine and estuarine environments. Strains of Acidithrix ferrooxidans oxidize Fe(II) in acidic waters, … Continue reading Microbial Ecology course adds to Wikipedia
Elizabeth Swanner is part of a multi-institution award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to form an Interdisciplinary Consortium on Astrobiology Research (ICAR). The project is lead by Dr. Betül Kacar from the University of Arizona. The project,” Metal Utilization and Selection Across Eons”, or MUSE, and will explore life’s selection of elements … Continue reading Swanner is part of an Interdisciplinary Consortium on Astrobiology Research
PI Betsy Swanner was recently awarded an NSF CAREER award for a project entitled, “Quantifying the Extent and Biogeochemical Impact of Modern Ferruginous Lakes”. You can find Betsy’s Twitter summary of this project here, or read the NSF summary here. Betsy was one of 10 ISU researchers to receive this prestigious award in FY 2020. … Continue reading Betsy Swanner receives NSF CAREER award
Recent alum Gabbie Ledesma (Geology ’20) won the BEST Undergraduate oral presentation at the virtual North Central sectional meeting of the Geological Society of America. You can watch Gabbie’s presentation video entitled “Can Terrestrial Manganese-rich Samples Help Distinguish Manganese-enrichments in Gale Crater Mars?”, at this link. Rising junior Jazlyn Beeck (Geology and Environmental Sciences ’22) … Continue reading Gabbie and Jazlyn win student presenter awards at North Central Geological Society of America meeting
Recent alum Gabbie Ledesma (Geology ’20) presented her undergraduate research at the virtual North Central sectional meeting of the Geological Society of America. Gabbie’s presentation, entitled “Can Terrestrial Manganese-rich Samples Help Distinguish Manganese-enrichments in Gale Crater Mars?”, is the culmination of research conducted with her advisor, Dr. Betsy Swanner, and collaborators at the Los Alamos … Continue reading Gabbie gives amazing virtual conference presentation
Graduate students Tania Leung and Micah Fatka shifted a symposium they were planning to an awesome online event. Click here to read an article about their work from ISU’s Graduate College.
Collaborators on our work on Brownie Lake helped to draft a Wikipedia entry for Brownie Lake, which has now been approved! Take a moment to read about this fascinating little lake.
Gabbie Ledesma (’20), a geology major, has been awarded an Iowa Space Grant Consortium undergraduate research fellowship for 2019-2020. This will provide her will a stipend to do independent research with Dr. Elizabeth Swanner. She will continue her investigations of Manganese enrichments in lake sediments in order to better understand Manganese enrichments in the former … Continue reading Gabbie Ledesma awarded an Iowa Space Grant Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Nick Lambrecht successfully defended his PhD! He is the first graduate student to graduate from the Geochemistry & Geobiology laboratory. His research investigated two meromictic ferruginous lakes in the Midwest, U.S.A. Specifically, he documented their potential as biogeochemical analogues to Precambrian ferruginous oceans, and the microbial iron and methane cycles within them. Nick’s PhD is … Continue reading Nick Lambrecht defends his dissertation