2018
October
Kimberly created and launched the 1st Annual Rocky Top Bioblitz with help from Will Kuhn from Discover Life in America (DLiA) and Mike McKinney from UT Earth and Planetary Sciences. In total, 175 students, faculty, staff, and members of the public participated and added observations to our iNaturalist page. Participants represented a number of UT departments, including Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Earth & Planetary Sciences, Animal Science, Business, Political Science, Nursing, and Sociology! Participants made 968 observations of 267 species. The most observed species included Eastern Gray Squirrel, Common Pill Woodlouse, and American Beautyberry. Students from Kimberly’s Global Change Ecology course (EEB 419) who participated in the Bioblitz were featured on the 6pm local news!
Will Kuhn (right) from DLiA at the Rocky Top Bioblitz tent.
Students from Kimberly’s Global Change Ecology course checking out a salamander during the 1st Annual Rocky Top Bioblitz.
September
The Sheldon Lab has a new postdoc; welcome to Dr. Luis Carrasco Tornero!
August
We’re thrilled that Anchal Padukone has joined the lab as a PhD student!
July
Kimberly and her collaborator Caleb Hickman from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians ran the first year of their “Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) High School Summer Research Program” in Cherokee, NC! Four students took part in the program, which provided an authentic research experience complete with coding exercises to analyze data and a final presentation to the EBCI Office of Fisheries & Wildlife Management. Many thanks to Kimberly’s collaborator Caleb, to our funding sources — the Cherokee Preservation Foundation and the UTK Office of Community Engagement & Outreach — and to Sheldon Lab members who helped with the effort, including postdoc Amanda Carter, grad student Maggie Mamantov, and undergrads Will Kirkpatrick and Shelby Collins. The first year of the program was featured on both the UTK Office of Community Engagement & Outreach website and as an article in Higher Ground, the UTK Alumni magazine.
May
Undergrad Will Kirkpatrick received a grant to carry out an independent summer project. Way to go, Will!
April
Will Kirkpatrick, an undergrad in the Sheldon Lab, presented his first poster at two different events: the UTK EUReCA event and the EEB Undergraduate Research Symposium. Great work, Will!
Kimberly and collaborator Caleb Hickman of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians received funding from the UT Community Engagement Incentives Grant and the Cherokee Preservation Foundation to run their new Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) High School Summer Research Program! Many thanks to these agencies for supporting our new program.
Amanda Carter, a postdoc researcher in the Sheldon Lab, was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology to integrate plasticity and maternal effects in dung beetles to understand impacts of increased temperature variation! Congratulations, Amanda!
Congratulations to Maggie for receiving an Honorable Mention for her NSF GRFP proposal!
Undergrad Will Kirkpatrick presenting his first poster based on a bird study he completed in the Sheldon Lab
March
Congrats to Will for receiving his first research grant! He was awarded funding from the UTK Office of Undergraduate Research to carry out a field project this summer. Way to go, Will!
