ARCS Foundation – Phoenix Chapter
Congratulations to our NAU ARCS Foundation Scholars!
To learn more, please visit the ARCS Foundation – Phoenix Chapter.
On October 3rd at the Flagstaff Mountain Campus, the NAU Graduate College welcomed members from the ARCS Foundation, Phoenix Chapter. The site visit and luncheon were a celebration of NAU’s eleven 23-24 ARCS Scholars from Biology and the School of Earth Science and Environmental Sustainability. We appreciate and thank the ARCS Foundation donors for their generous support!
Our Recipients
Eva Baransky
PhD Student in Earth Science & Environmental Sustainability, Northern Arizona University
Eva received her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Barnard College where she studied the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction, the greatest mass extinction known to date. She next worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory supporting nuclear safeguard programs focused on early detection of nuclear material misuse. Eva began her PhD in the School of Earth and Sustainability at Northern Arizona University in 2019. Her doctoral research aims to identify the controls on the marine concentration of nickel, a bio-essential trace metal, in past and present oceans.
Bea Bock
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Bea Bock (she/her) is a third-year PhD student co-advised by Dr. Kitty Gehring and Dr. Nancy Johnson in the Biology department at Northern Arizona University. She studies plant-fungal interactions, focusing on sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), and is interested in fungal networks facilitating resource transfers among plants. In her free time, she loves the outdoor access in Flagstaff and enjoys trail running, hiking, mushroom hunting, and kayaking.
Sara Gabrielson
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Sara Gabrielson received a BA in Environmental Studies with departmental honors from Vassar College. Through research and environmental consulting, she has worked to identify and test solutions to conserve native biodiversity in northeastern US forests, east African plains, southwestern deserts, and now in the forests of Hawaii. Sara is currently a PhD candidate at Northern Arizona University researching the conservation of ecosystem functions to protect and promote native biodiversity. Her work focuses on the impacts of extinctions and invasive species on the vital ecological functions of pollination and seed dispersal. Sara is passionate about supporting future scientists and consistently mentors undergraduate research assistants in ecological techniques.
Elizabeth Gideon
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Elizabeth Gideon is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences. She received her BS in Exercise Science in 2018 from the University at Buffalo and her MS in Biological Sciences from NAU. Her research looks at how different environmental stressors such as altitude, dehydration, and microgravity impact the cardiovascular and respiratory systems in humans.
Alejandro Grajal-Puche
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Alejandro received a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona and an MS in Biology from Middle Tennessee State University. Alejandro is focused on understanding how various farming practices (conventional vs. organic) affect fungal communities, how arthropod communities differ between each farming practice, and how amphibian and reptile community patterns differ. His goal is to identify farming strategies that conserve wildlife inhabiting rice field ecosystems while improving natural ecosystem services to enhance farming sustainability.
Christopher Hancock
PhD Student in Earth Science & Environmental Sustainability, Northern Arizona University
Chris graduated from George Washington University with a BS in Geology and from the University of Denver with a MA in Geography. His thesis focused on changes to the snowpack in Colorado. He also worked in industry where he revised floodplain maps and was exposed to the impacts of extreme precipitation events. His Ph.D. research focuses on reconstructing climate variability over the past 12,000 years. By understanding past changes, he hopes to improve predictions for how human-caused warming will impact drought and precipitation intensity. To achieve this, he combines environmental data recorded in geological archives with global climate models to develop regional reconstructions of moisture availability. This allows him to study how the hydroclimate of different regions responded during periods of Earth’s history when the climate was warmer.
Audrey Harvey
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Audrey received two BS degrees, one in Environmental Studies-Policy and the other in Biology, from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Her MS Degree is from Montana State University in Land Resources and Environmental Science. She is currently researching plant community ecology, invasion biology, conservation biology, integrated weed management, improving revegetation practices, native plants development, and restoration ecology in arid landscapes. Her current focus is improving native seed quality and quantity of five wildflower plants by utilizing the concept of maternal effects in a seed production system for large-scale restoration efforts.
Colin Hubbard
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Colin Hubbard is a current fourth year Biology PhD student who completed his undergraduate in Exercise Science at NAU in the spring of 2020. He began his PhD in Fall of 2020 where he is studying various aspects of respiratory physiology. His ongoing work is investigating respiratory muscle function following a fatiguing task. Specifically, he is studying “coactivation” whereby the inspiratory muscles, via a presently unknown mechanism, are negatively impacted by a task that reduces pressure generation of the expiratory muscles (and vice versa). Additional work includes the study of respiratory mechanics (relationship of pressure and airflow in the lungs) in a variety of physiologic situations such has between sexes and in adult survivors of preterm birth. Colin hopes to extend this work to a dissertation project that may include how environmental stimuli, specifically heat, influence respiratory muscle function and breathlessness.
Allison Kelley
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Allison graduated summa cum laude from Framingham State University with a BS in Environmental Science and Policy with minors in both Biology and English. After graduation, she worked as a technical writer in a laboratory using radiocarbon as a chemical tracer to understand the persistence and environmental impacts of chemicals on the natural environment. Her Ph.D. research focuses on utilizing radiocarbon as a tool to carbon date the soil particles transported in Arctic groundwater, rivers, permafrost thaw, ground ice melt, and increased precipitation to better understand carbon cycling in the Arctic as it relates to climate change.
Emma Lathrop
PhD Student in Biology, Northern Arizona University
Emma Lathrop graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Biology and a minor in mathematics from Montana State University. Afterward, she spent three years working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, primarily focusing on a project aimed at improving the representation of Arctic processes in global climate models. Her work often took her to Nome, Alaska and she fell in love with the isolation and beauty of the northern latitudes. Driven by a desire to protect the remote and delicate tundra landscapes of the Arctic, Emma began a PhD program in August 2021. Combining her passion for soils and the Arctic, she studies the effects of permafrost thaw in the Arctic under the guidance of Dr. Ted Schuur at Northern Arizona University in the Biology department and the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society. At NAU her work has focused on improving understanding of how soil carbon pools in the Arctic shift in a warming climate.
Joseph Phillips
PhD Student in Earth Science & Environmental Sustainability, Northern Arizona University
Joseph received his Bachelor’s in Science concentrating on Earth science from New Mexico Tech in 2017 and before starting his PhD at Northern Arizona University, he worked as a GIS Field Technician for Davey Resource Group and Staff Geologist at Western Technologies Inc. Motivated to pursue the frontiers of geophysics Joseph researches the Pacific oceanic plate to understand how the dynamic processes that shape our earth inevitably lead to devastating earthquakes. Joseph is also a research and development geophysicist intern at Sandia National Laboratories working on the geologic models that will enable future modeling of earthquakes and explosions for national security in nuclear nonproliferation. Outside of research, Joseph enjoys climbing, kayaking, hiking, and motorcycles.
2023-2024 Recipients at the April 2023 ARCS Foundation Awards Banquet in Phoenix, Arizona.