I am fortunate to have received awards, press, and public speaking opportunities that have helped me share my research with large groups of people and, hopefully, inspire a few individuals to value their environment or even pursue careers in science. I highlight these events and publications here.
Our recent study showing that increasing storm activity is likely playing a major role in observed increases in tropical tree mortality was highlighted in this excellent article in Mongabay. I believe that the research paper inspiring much of this article, which you can find as an open-access paper here, is among the most important things that we have done scientifically.
We published a paper showing that some trees can counterintuitively benefit from lightning, and this paper was the subject of hundreds of news pieces in many languages. This research was also featured in national public radio in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. You can find the scientific publication here, and you can sift through many of these media pieces listed on the Altmetric page, which estimates that this article received more attention than 99.96% of all scientific publications ever produced.
Our Gigante project was the focus of an exceptional long-form piece in Mongabay that was accompanied by a professional video describing this work. Even if you aren’t into our research, the quality reporting here is worth the view.
Science highlighted my collaborative work on lightning disturbance. This article was prompted by an Oral Session that I organized at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America meeting in 2019. Click here to read more.
I represented the Graduate School at the university-wide graduation ceremony in December 2018 because I was awarded the Guy Stevenson Award, which is given to the “most outstanding graduate doctorate” at the University of Louisville. I was then selected to give the commencement speech to a crowd of more than 10,000 friends and relatives of the graduating class. I was very honored to receive this award and be chosen to speak to the students. My speech is embedded here (introduction at the 34:30 mark):
As a consequence of receiving the Guy Stevenson Award, I also spoke at the Doctoral Hooding Ceremony earlier the same day. Here is my speech to the graduating doctorates, their families, and their friends (speech begins at 33:00):
My collaborator (Jane Lucas) and I were interviewed by Mongabay regarding our publication exploring the job market for conservation biologists with tertiary degrees (i.e., a masters or PhD). You can read more about our findings in the interview here.
In 2018, an undergraduate student that I mentored (Noah Gripshover) published his undergraduate thesis. The findings of this manuscript were highlighted in Entomology Today, which you can read here. Noah is now finishing his Masters in animal behavior at the University of Cincinnati with plans to pursue a PhD in the near future.
I presented the preliminary results of our work on lightning at the Ecological Society of America meeting in 2017 and this work was highlighted in the American Geophysical Union’s publication EOS. You can read about how lightning is an important agent of large tree mortality here.
The University of Louisville wrote a short profile about my work as a graduate student in 2016. This article highlighted my background and interests in tropical ecology. Read more about it here.
I presented some of my early work on tree electrical properties at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in 2015. This work attracted the attention of a SICB writer who highlighted this work in an online publication. You can read more about it here.
Disturbance Ecology and Decomposition 