Special Announcements

YIBS Dissertation Enhancement Awards - 2012
Please click here for application information.

Two Distinguished Visiting Scholars serving in the spring 2012

Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Os Schmitz, is pleased to announce the appointment of two Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholars to serve during the spring 2012 semester.

Professor Arne Mooers, Professor of Biodiversity at Simon Fraser University, is joining the Yale Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) during the spring of 2012 as an Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholar.  Professor Mooers, a leading authority in phylogenetic inference and the use of phylogenies for conservation, was nominated by EEB Professors Thomas Near and Walter Jetz, and collaborate with them and with Professors Michael Donoghue and Jeffrey Townsend from EEB, Professor Jacques Gauthier in the Department of Geology & Geophysics, and William Piel,Cryo Collections Manger at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, among others.

Professor Mooers has an intriguing perspective on “Conserving the Tree of Life” and his contributions range from classic work on extinctions and phylogenetic tree shape, to the use of phylogenies in conservation and language evolution, combining complex evolutionary theory and methods in molecular evolution with a large array of questions in evolutionary and ecological biology.  His work ranges in organisms from fruit flies and butterflies to lemurs and birds, and he has addressed concepts and themes such as metapopulations, phylogenetic tree balance, macroevolution, ecological speciation, sexual selection, biogeography, and evolutionary distinctiveness.  We look forward to having Professor Mooers as a Bass Distinguished Scholar during the spring 2012 semester.

Dr, Scott L. Wing, in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institution, is joining the Yale Department of Geology & Geophysics (G&G) during the spring of 2012 as an Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholar. 

Dr. Wing is an internationally recognized paleobotanist who specializes in paleoecology and paleoclimates.  With over 70 papers and two co-authored books, he has long been a leader in the study of terrestrial paleoecology and climates of the early Cenozoic.  About eight years ago, he became the first to find and explicate the terrestrial record of the Paleocene-Eocene Climatic Maximum (PETM), a short term and extreme warming event, and its effect on the biota and soils of the northwestern United States.   He is a highly collaborative researcher who can bring resources from numerous fields to bear on complex problems such as the PETM.  While at Yale, he will have the opportunity to interact with a broad cross-section of ecologists, geochemists and paleontologists from Yale to help him develop ideas for the book that he is writing on PETM.  One of the areas that he wishes to explore is how to get society to react to crises, such as sea level rise, that occur on a scale of hundreds to thousands of years.  We are happy to have Dr. Wing serving as a Bass Distinguished Scholar during the spring 2012 semester.

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Yale Climate and Energy Institute (YCEI)

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JOURNEY OF THE UNIVERSE
(Click here for the list of upcoming screenings)


The film Journey of the Universe is a compelling film about our place in the universe.  Although academic scholars often frame humanity's search for meaning in abstract solitary terms, or as a conversation between an individual and God, this movie shifts the focus to the world itself.  Science has found patterns of interconnection in Nature, for instance, pivotal balances in the Big Bang that determined the existence of the universe as we know it.  Through a single day as a tourist on Pythagoreas' island in the Aegean, narrator Brian Swimme describes how biology has illuminated the shared links of all life, while chemistry and physics have illuminated the interactions and origins of all matter. Although God is mostly a shadow behind the narrative, the film clearly suggests that we should be looking outward for spiritual guidance, as well as inward.
Jeffrey J. Park

Professor, Geology & Geophysics, Yale University

Please click here, or on the picture above for information about the film, including its current and future showings.