Department NewsMessage from the chair
Dear Friends,
We have hired three outstanding new faculty members who will join us as assistant professors over the next year. Dan Rabosky, currently a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, has already made very significant contributions in understanding the rates of diversification over evolutionary history, and will serve as a curator of herpetology as well as assistant professor in EEB. Stephen Smith, currently a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University, is a computational evolutionary biologist, who has developed innovative approaches that enable studies of huge phylogenetic trees to answer questions about rates of phenotypic and molecular evolution, with a focus on plants. Together, Rabosky and Smith greatly strengthen our program in evolutionary biology; we hope to add one more position in evolutionary biology next year. Vincent Denef is the EEB hire in an interdisciplinary cluster in microbial ecology. He brings expertise in metagenomic analyses of microbial communities, where the genes and proteins of entire communities of microbes, rather than single organisms are examined to understand systems-level functioning.
In other faculty news, we congratulate Professors Trisha Wittkopp, Chris Dick, and Aaron King, who were all promoted from assistant professor to associate professor with tenure this year, and wish the best to Professor George Estabrook, who began his retirement furlough.
On a much more somber note, in January, the department was greatly saddened by the death of Professor Emerita Beverly Rathcke, after a short illness. Beverly had begun her retirement less than a year before and was immensely enjoying her freedom to travel, long visits with friends, and the time for cooking and sharing marvelous meals. Beverly was a distinguished ecologist and beloved by many generations of graduate students – she served as major advisor to 29 Ph.D. students and on more than 50 dissertation committees in Biology, EEB and SNRE. She was a wonderful colleague and friend and we are still mourning her loss.
Finally, a brief preview of our next newsletter. Just a few weeks ago as the end of June approached, we suddenly realized that a very significant date was coming up: EEB would be 10 years old on July 1, 2011. To celebrate, the next newsletter will include a review of some of the many accomplishments of our faculty, students and staff over the past 10 years and a look at our plans for the next 10 years. So, alumni, this is a good time to send us your news – you can do that on the alumni news page of our website (http://www.lsa.umich.edu/eeb/alumni/alumni-news.asp) or send an email to me (degold@umich.edu) or to our communications specialist and editor, Gail Kuhnlein (kuhnlein@umich.edu).
My warmest regards to all of you,
We are currently seeking long-term support for various initiatives that are underway within EEB that aim to strengthen and diversify students in the biological sciences.
