Faculty Eve Robinson and Nicholas Som Biological Sciences

Eve Robinson (Department of Biological Sciences) and Nicholas Som (Department of Fisheries Biology; USFWS) co-authored an article in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management, titled “Prevalence of infection in hatchery-origin Chinook Salmon correlates with abundance of Ceratonova shasta spores: implications for management and disease risk”.  Their research was motivated by questions the State raised about potential linkages between hatchery fish and disease risk, and results from this work were published earlier this year in time to be used by decision-makers in timing the release of hatchery smolts in the Klamath River.

Student INRSEP/LSAMP students Other Campus Unit

The following students will be presenting the results of their summer research at the SACNAS conference next week: Stephen Galindo (Geology) mentor Dr. Meagan Gonnea USGS; Caleb Sandoval (Wildlife) mentor Janene Lichtenberg, Salish Kootenai College; Cody Henrikson (Marine Biology) with Clair Windecker and mentor Dr. Sean Craig; Alexis Hernandez (Marine Biology)with Floyd Clark (Environmental Science & Management)and mentor Dr. Jim Graham and Dr. Nievita Bueno Watts; Madison Lalica (Botany) mentor Dr. Mihai Tomescu; Joshua Maldonado (Physics & Astronomy) mentor Dr. Ruth Saunders; Christian Trujillo (Environmental Science & Management) mentor Dr. Catherine Bowman, Arizona State University

Faculty Oscar Vargas Biological Sciences

Oscar Vargas, Assistant Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, published a paper in the journal Evolution:“Patterns of speciation are similar across mountainous and lowland regions for a Neotropical plant radiation (Costaceae: Costus)” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.14108

Faculty Kamila Larripa Mathematics

Kamila Larripa and co-authors had their paper accepted to the Journal of Theoretical Biology. The paper is entitled “Bifurcation and sensitivity analysis reveal key drivers of multistability in a model of macrophage polarization” and investigates how a specific immune cell responds to cytokine signals.

Faculty Dr. Laura Levy Geology

Dr. Laura Levy, in collaboration with 11 co-authors, published “Multi-phased deglaciation of south and southeast Greenland controlled by climate and topographic setting” in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. This comprehensive study tracked the timing of retreat of the Greenland Ice Sheet since the last ice age in an area of Greenland that is especially sensitive to climate change.

Faculty Jasper Oshun, Margaret Lang, Yojana Miraya Geology

Dr. Oshun gave an invited talk at the 1ST INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHY CONGRESS OF APURIMAC IN SOUTHERN REGION PERU on August 28th. The title of the talk was, “Bonanza en los Andes: Estudio de los recursos de agua y desarrollo en colaboración con la comunidad de Zurite, Anta,” and focused on Dr. Oshun and Dr. Lang’s water development project in Perú. Successes so far include the construction of 1.5 km of irrigation canals, 4 student presentations at international geology conferences, and over 20 involved undergraduate and graduate students from Humboldt.

Faculty Alison O'Dowd Environmental Science & Management

ESM professor Alison O’Dowd and former NR graduate student Lara Jansen published a paper in the journal River Research and Applications entitled, “A comparison of benthic algal and macroinvertebrate communities in a dammed and undammed Mediterranean river (Eel River watershed, California, USA).”

Faculty Dr. Hunter Harrill Forestry & Wildland Resources

Was featured in a two part podcast “Talking Timber” by the Pacific Logging Congress, about his experiences in the forest industry and teaching at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Part 1:
https://www.pacificloggingcongress.org/podcast/episode/381c8114/dr-hunter-harrill-assistant-professor-of-forest-operations-at-humboldt-state-university

Part 2:
https://www.pacificloggingcongress.org/podcast/episode/34e7de73/dr-hunter-harrill-assistant-professor-of-forest-operations-at-humboldt-state-university-part-2

Faculty Peter Goetz Mathematics

Recently published the single-authored paper “Graded Coherence of Certain Extensions of Graded Algebras” in Communications in Algebra, June 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/00927872.2020.1775844

The paper studies when the coherence property is inherited by certain extensions of algebras.

Staff Matt Johnson, Amy Sprowles, Katlin Goldenberg, Steven Margell, and Lisa Castellino Wildlife

A team of faculty and staff published a paper documenting the effects of the first three years of the Klamath Connection placed-based learning community entitled, “Effect of a Place-Based Learning Community on Belonging, Persistence, and Equity Gaps for First-Year STEM Students” in the journal Innovative Higher Education. The article is open-access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-020-09519-5

Faculty Matt Johnson, Sacha Heath Wildlife

Matt Johnson, professor in the Dept of Wildlife, and Humboldt alum Dr. Sacha Heath co-organized a symposium, “Protecting and restoring bird habitat in the agricultural matrix: net benefits for birds and farmers” with 10 invited speakers held at the 2020 North American Ornithological Conference, August 14, 2020.

Student Deven Kammerichs-Berke, Matt Johnson Wildlife

Deven Kammerichs-Berke, graduate student in Wildlife, presented results from his thesis, “Community Composition and Foraging Selectivity of Insectivorous Bird on Central Kenyan Shade Coffee Farms,” at the North American Ornithological Conference, Aug 12, 2020.

Faculty Katelyn Raby, Mark Colwell Wildlife

Katie Raby and Mark Colwell published a paper in Wader Study, an international journal dedicated to conservation of shorebirds. Their 15-yr analysis show that Snowy Plover nests survived better on restored beaches of Humboldt County, CA compared with unrestored areas.

Faculty Daniel Barton Wildlife

Dan Barton published an open-access article “Impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on field instruction and remote teaching alternatives: Results from a survey of instructors” in the journal Ecology and Evolution. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.6628

Faculty Dr. Hunter Harrill Forestry & Wildland Resources

Gave an invited presentation to the U.S. Forest Service, Six River’s National Forest, Forest Leadership Team (FLT) Meeting, on May 18th titled: “An Introduction to Tethered Harvesting Systems.”

Faculty Bori Mazzag, Kamila Larripa, Viri Macias, Megan Johnson, Ana Sammel and Emma Villegas Mathematics

Bori Mazzag and Kamila Larripa each received a CSU PUMP grant to mentor students in mathematical research for the 2020/2021 academic year. Mazzag will investigate calcium dynamics using differential equations and graph theory with Viri Macias and Megan Johnson, and Larripa will model the interaction between Sars-CoV-2 and the host’s immune system, working with Ana Sammel and Emma Villegas.

Faculty Steven Railsback, Bret Harvey Mathematics

Steven Railsback (adjunct faculty, Mathematics) and Bret Harvey (adjunct, Fisheries Biology) just published the book “Modeling Populations of Adaptive Individuals”, volume 63 in the prestigious Princeton Monographs in Population Biology series. The book presents a new kind of theory for adaptive behavior of individual organisms (e.g., when and where to forage, considering both growth and predation risk) that works in complex individual-based population models. The book builds on Humboldt’s long tradition in individual-based ecological modeling. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691195285/modeling-populations-of-adaptive-individuals

Faculty Kamila Larripa Mathematics

Kamila Larripa coauthored the paper “A Tutorial Review of Mathematical Techniques for Quantifying Tumor Heterogeneity” which was accepted for publication. The work considers intra-tumor and inter-patient heterogeneity and mathematical models for precision medicine. It will appear in Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering.

Student Charlin Duff, Skye Gibney, Eric Malekos Mathematics

Charlin Duff, Skye Gibney and Eric Malekos received an Honorable Mention for their participation in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling. Their project used mathematical modeling to make policy suggestions with the goal of mitigating the detrimental effect of plastic waste on the environment.

Student Jasmine Shen Environmental Science & Management

ESM graduate student Jasmine Shen was awarded the COAST Graduate Student Research Award, which will help to fund her Masters research studying invertebrate drift on the Trinity River.