2009 Updates

November 2009: Congratulations to Karis Tenneson Puruncajas, who successfully passed her general exams this month!
October 2009: UERL Lab Manager / Research Scientist, Dr. Lucy Hutyra is leaving the lab to take up her new position as Assistant Professor of Geography & Environment at Boston University. We all congratulate her and wish her well — she will be sorely missed!

September 2009: We welcome back Michal Russo, who has returned to Seattle with her family. She now works at the lab as a Research Scientist.

September 2009: Congratulations to Dr. Andrew Bjorn of the UERL, who successfully defended his dissertation, “Assessing the relationships between land cover and housing prices in King County, Washington using Bayesian Model Averaging” on September 8, 2009.

August 2009: A two-day Biocomplexity II Workshop was held in Seattle on August 26-27 with participants from Arizona State University and the University of Washington.

July 2009: Michelle Kondo had a second child, and has accepted a teaching post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania.

June 2009: The UERL received funding from the Bullitt Foundation for a new project: “Linking urbanization and vegetation carbon patterns.” Lucy Hutyra started work on the project this summer with a team of student employees, Bryan Yoon and Kristi Park.

March 2009: Daniele Spirandelli successfully passed her general exams on March 10, and gave birth to twin girls, Nadia & Kaya, on March 18!

February 2009: The UERL welcomed our new Postdoctoral Research Associate, Matthew Marsik, who joined the lab on February 1, 2009. Matt received his PhD from from the University of Florida Geography Department with his dissertation: Interdisciplinary contributions to spatial and temporal analyses for land cover change. He is receiving funding from Weyerhaeuser for his work on land cover change modeling in the UERL.