University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

EEB graduate student Leiling Tao has been awarded the Barbour Scholarship for 2010-11 by the Rackham Graduate School.

Tao joins a long line of outstanding women who, over the past 96 years, have become leaders in science, education, public service, medicine and other fields in their home countries all over the world. She will receive $17,200, tuition and health and dental insurance for the academic year.

In 1914, the bequest of Levi L. Barbour established a scholarship program at U-M for women of the highest academic and professional caliber from the area formerly known as the Orient (encompassing the region extending from Turkey in the west to Japan and the Philippines in the east) to study modern science, medicine, mathematics and other academic disciplines and professions critical to the development of their native lands. Tao is originally from Guangzhou, China. She graduated from Sun Yat-sen University with a bachelor's degree in ecology in 2008. Tao currently studies how resource imbalance affects species interactions under global environmental change. For her future career she plans to apply her knowledge in theoretical and applied research to natural and degraded ecosystems in China.