Biology experts

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  • Brian Barnes

    Brian Barnes

    October 28, 2022

    Physiological ecology and endocrinology of hibernating mammals; biological rhythms and sleep; overwintering biology of animals including arctic ground squirrels, black bears and insects.
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  • Stefanie Ickert-Bond

    Stefanie Ickert-Bond

    October 28, 2022

    Evolutionary biology, plant systematics, floristics and revisionary systematics.
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  • Portrait

    Abel Bult-Ito

    October 28, 2022

    Behavioral neuroscience with a focus on how the brain regulates adaptive and non-adaptive behaviors.
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  • Laura Conner

    Laura Conner

    October 28, 2022

    Teacher professional development in science and artscience, integrating art with science learning (STEAM), science identity and gender, and the value of real and immersive learning experiences.
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  • Kelly Drew

    October 28, 2022

    Neuropharmacology, hibernation, brain injury. New strategies to treat brain injury, especially injury caused by stroke and cardiac arrest. A primary focus is on therapeutic hypothermia guided by the study of hibernating animals.
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  • Devin Drown

    Devin Drown

    October 28, 2022

    Evolutionary biology, coevolution, host-symbiont interactions. Develop a mechanistic understanding by which abiotic and biotic forces drive the direction and rate of evolution of coevolutionary interactions.
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  • Kriya Dunlap

    October 28, 2022

    Health benefits of subsistence foods, biochemistry, toxicology.
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  • Nancy Fresco

    Nancy Fresco

    October 28, 2022

    Nancy Fresco is an expert in biology, forest ecology, climate change, conservation biology, resource measurement, landscape ecology, and resource inventory.
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  • Georgina Gibson

    Georgina Gibson

    October 28, 2022

    Lower trophic level marine ecosystem modeling, individual (agent) based modeling of plankton and juvenile fish. Using computational approaches to explore marine ecosystem dynamics in high latitude seas.
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  • Gino Graziano

    Gino Graziano

    October 28, 2022

    Gino Graziano is an invasive plants specialist with Extension with interests in developing management techniques and providing educational opportunities for land managers, private industry and the public regarding invasive plant and forest health management.
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  • Pamela Groves

    October 28, 2022

    Muskoxen, ancient DNA.
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  • Syndonia (Donie) Bret-Harte

    Syndonia (Donie) Bret-Harte

    October 28, 2022

    Bret-Harte is a plant community and ecosystem ecologist. Her focus is on how global climate change affects arctic vegetation composition and nutrient cycling.
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  • Donna Hauser

    Donna Hauser

    October 28, 2022

    Donna Hauser is an expert in marine ecology focusing on marine mammals and other species in changing Arctic and temperate oceans. Her research interests include supporting community-based observing of coastal change.
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  • Gwenn Hennon

    Gwenn Hennon

    October 28, 2022

    Phytoplankton ecology, climate change, environmental genomics
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  • Falk Huettmann

    Falk Huettmann

    October 28, 2022

    Falk’s research interests include wildlife ecology, seabirds, predictive GIS modeling, web-based wildlife databases and metadata, spatial aspects of population viability analysis (PVA), future landscape scenarios of wildlife habitat, landscape ecology, Russian far east, tropical ecology, conservation steady state economy.
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  • Glenn Patrick Juday

    Glenn Patrick Juday

    October 28, 2022

    Glenn Juday uses tree rings and long-term forest plots to understand climate controls over tree growth, environmental change and wood biomass production.
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  • Brendan Kelly

    Brendan Kelly

    October 28, 2022

    Marine ecology with a focus on sea ice environments. Conservation biology, ecology and evolution, climate change, ecosystem ecology.
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  • Gary Kofinas

    Gary Kofinas

    October 28, 2022

    Resilience of northern rural communities as social-ecological systems; Community-based resource stewardship, adaptive co-management institutions; local knowledge in ecological monitoring and assessment; social networks of subsistence-cash economies; the science and practice of transdisciplinary research.
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  • Don Larson

    Don Larson

    October 28, 2022

    Larson focuses on how animals and their parasites cope with environmental changes. Researches how parasites overwinter and how changes in host physiology influence parasite overwintering strategies.
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  • Olivia Lee

    Olivia Lee

    October 28, 2022

    Lee’s research focuses on the integration of community observations and remote sensing imagery of sea ice to assess walrus and ice seal habitat in northern Alaska.
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  • Mary Beth Leigh

    Mary Beth Leigh

    October 28, 2022

    Biodegradation of contaminants, biogeochemical cycling, microbiology, microbial ecology. Biodegradation of environmental contaminants and biogeochemical cycling in soils, groundwater and marine environments.
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  • Juan Andrés López

    Juan Andrés López

    October 28, 2022

    Fish biology, genetics and biodiversity. Studies fish diversity and evolution using evidence from anatomy and genetics to understand the biological processes that shape the distribution and variability of fish populations both living and in the past.
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  • A. Dave McGuire

    A. Dave McGuire

    October 28, 2022

    Operation of ecological processes at large spatial scales; ecological modeling; global change biology.
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  • Sarah Mincks

    Sarah Mincks

    October 28, 2022

    Soft-sediment (benthic) seafloor communities, primarily in the polar regions. Invertebrate and microbial communities and the role of these communities in the functioning of polar ecosystems.
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  • Jeffrey Muehlbauer

    Jeffrey Muehlbauer

    October 28, 2022

    Jeffrey Muehlbauer studies rivers and aquatic food webs. His research interests lie primarily in understanding how habitat variables related to hydrology and geomorphology affect the distribution and composition of species, particularly aquatic insects.
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  • Diane O’Brien

    Diane O’Brien

    October 28, 2022

    Stable isotope ecology, nutritional physiology, and biomarker development. Diane’s research is focused on the development of biomarkers for use in nutritional epidemiology. O’Brien uses dietary tools based on natural stable isotope ratios to study the effects of changing diets on Alaska Native health and other populations.
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  • Link Olson

    Link Olson

    October 28, 2022

    Evolutionary mammalogy, taxonomy, phylogenetics, molecular evolution, conservation.
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  • Stacy Rasmus

    Stacy Rasmus

    October 28, 2022

    Rasmus’ research focuses on understanding the intersections between culture, health, and well-being, and the role of resilience and protective factors in reducing health disparities among American Indian/Alaska Native peoples.
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  • Janice Rowell

    Janice Rowell

    October 28, 2022

    Jan Rowell’s research interests include muskox and reindeer husbandry, including behavior, breeding seasons, female estrus synchronization, artificial insemination, gestation length and grazing ecology.
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  • Roger W. Ruess

    Roger W. Ruess

    October 28, 2022

    Boreal forest ecology, plant-herbivore interactions, plan ecophysiology. Exploring how changing climate and disturbance regimes are affecting boreal forest composition and ecosystem function, and the consequences for climate feedbacks and social-ecological systems.
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  • Gay Sheffield

    Gay Sheffield

    October 28, 2022

    Diet and foraging ecology, Arctic marine mammal ecology, subsistence harvest, industrial maritime traffic. Marine mammal biology and health of subsistence species and others.
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  • Derek Sikes

    Derek Sikes

    October 28, 2022

    Entomology, systematics, biodiversity. I study and teach children and adults about terrestrial and fresh-water arthropods of Alaska, such as insects, spiders and centipedes.
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  • Elena Sparrow

    Elena Sparrow

    October 28, 2022

    Elena Sparrow is an expert in teaching and learning, pedagogy and education, professional development, and soil microbiology.
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  • Donald A. (Skip) Walker

    Donald A. (Skip) Walker

    October 28, 2022

    Description, mapping, and analysis of circumpolar arctic vegetation spatial patterns and temporal change along climate, soil, and disturbance gradients.
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  • Kevin Winker

    October 28, 2022

    Birds, genetics, biodiversity. Distribution of geographic variation in birds; ecological and environmental issues such as contaminants, stable isotopes, biological responses to climate change, and emerging diseases; adaptation and evolutionary divergence among populations; use of museum collections in science and society.
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  • Diana Wolf

    October 28, 2022

    Evolution of Alaskan plant populations using the tools of genomics and evolutionary modeling. Plant cold tolerance, plant breeding systems.
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  • Andy Baltensperger

    Andy Baltensperger

    October 29, 2022

    Andy Baltensperger is a landscape ecologist with expertise in the biogeography of mammals, birds, and amphibians, and their projected responses to environmental change.
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  • Kristin O’Brien

    Kristin O’Brien

    November 08, 2022

    Fish physiology and biochemistry, mitochondrial biology, metabolic remodeling in fishes at cold temperature and adaptations of Antarctic fishes to cold temperature. O’Brien’s research is aimed at understanding how fish maintain energy production at cold temperatures.
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