University of Vermont to Host United Nations Biosphere Delegation

On October 11, representatives from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Man and Biosphere Program (MAB) and the U.S. National Park Service will gather at the University of Vermont for the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Reserve’s (CABR) Annual Meeting.  The meeting will focus on how to improve human interaction with protected landscapes in order to maintain social, economic and ecological integrity.

 Cliff McCreedy and Jon Putnam from the U.S. National Park Service will kick off the meeting on the long-standing importance of biosphere reserves in developing the science of sustainability.  McCreedy is the Science and Stewardship Coordinator at the U.S. Park Service and directs the U.S. MAB Program, while Putnam is the World Heritage Program Officer and Western Hemisphere Park Affairs Specialist.

Representatives from the World Network of Biosphere Reserves will also give presentations on nearby biosphere reserves in Quebec and Ontario, as well as reserves in Brazil and Ukraine.  Presentations from organizations in Vermont and New York will illustrate the use of the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for local sustainability initiatives.  A highlight to the day will be signing a “twinning agreement” between CABR and the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Network in Ontario, in part to “develop and strengthen models for rural community sustainable development.”

“In the face of unprecedented human impact on Earth’s life support systems, we need international sharing and coordination at bioregional scales now more than ever,” says Jon Erickson, the Blittersdorf Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at the University of Vermont and host of the meeting.  “Our shared future depends on the ecological connectivity of our landscapes, the resilience of our renewable resources, and diverse learning communities.”

In 1976, UNESCO began designating biospheres with the aim “to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between people and their environments.” Now in its fifth decade, a growing network of 701 biosphere reserves in 124 countries is the proving ground for “sustainable development,” the balancing act of the environment’s capacity to support our economic aspirations.

“The urgency of the climate crisis makes clear humanity is dependent on the health and stability of the earth system that we share with all life. But our day to day experience is in regional ecosystems and economies, where we live, work, and play,” says Kelly Cerialo, co-chair of the CABR advisory committee and Assistant Professor at Paul Smith’s College.  “Confronting global environmental challenges necessitates international cooperation, but action in our home watersheds and biospheres proves what’s possible.”

Each biosphere reserve is meant to fulfill three basic functions, including the conservation of our landscapes and biodiversity, development of economies that are culturally and ecologically sustainable, and support of biosphere research and education.  The international coordinating council of the UN MAB Programme met earlier this year and added 18 new biosphere reserves to the growing international network.  In contrast, the United States recently withdrew 17 sites.  CABR is one of thirty US sites remaining.

“CABR is one of the largest biosphere reserves in the US network, with a long history of environmental stewardship with significant benefits to our economy and communities,” says Brian Houseal, co-chair of CABR and former director of the College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s Adirondack Ecological Center. “Economy and ecology need not be at odds, and our region can both share our experiences and learn from others in a global network of biosphere reserves.”

The October 11th meeting is from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm at the University of Vermont’s George D. Aiken Center, and is sponsored by the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, the Lake Champlain Basin Program, Paul Smith’s College, Gund Institute for Environment, UVM Environmental Program, Leadership for the Ecozoic Partnership, and the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  

More information:

October 11th Meeting Agenda

Map of the Champlain Adirondack Biosphere Reserve

Contact Kelly Cerialo at kcerialo@paulsmiths.edu or Jon Erickson at jon.erickson@uvm.edu (802-881-1901).

 

Source: UVM News

UVM and USDA’s Agricultural Research Service Will Partner to Identify Factors That Help Small Farms Succeed

Vermont has seen strong growth in the number of diversified farms and in value-added food production, as many American consumers have become more aware of where their food comes from and how it is produced. At the same time, challenges for small diversified farms continue to mount, from new crop pests and diseases to regulation, changing markets and climate change. 

To address these issues, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), in partnership with the University of Vermont, has established its first food systems research station designed specifically to study diversified food systems and the small farms that contribute to those systems.

The research station will identify factors that their their affect economic and environmental sustainability, with the goal of better understanding how small farms survive and thrive, and how consumers can best access local sustainably-grown food.  

The cooperative agreement, funded at $3 million for the first year, provides for UVM faculty to collaborate with ARS researchers imbedded on the UVM campus. The ARS Food Systems Research Station agreement will be renewed annually for at least five years.  

As vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy authored language in a 2019 appropriations bill to establish and fund the UVM-ARS collaboration. A provision that Senator Leahy secured in the FY20 Senate Agriculture Appropriations bill would increase funding to $5 million per year should it become law.

Senator Leahy said, “The University of Vermont is known nationally and internationally for its expertise in nutrition and sustainable agriculture, and I’m proud that the USDA ARS researchers will now have a station on campus to draw upon and expand that knowledge base.  Vermont has been at the forefront of diversified, sustainable, local food systems, and this research station will allow other regions to benefit from what we have learned and are building here in Vermont.”

“We couldn’t be more grateful to Senator Leahy for seeing the great need for this research and crafting legislation to support it,” said Suresh Garimella, UVM president. “Helping small, diversified farms succeed is critical to Vermont’s economic health and at the heart of UVM’s land grant mission. I’m very proud that UVM will be part of this effort and the larger mission to help small farms across the country.”       

The goal of the project is to create tangible information farmers can understand and put to practical use to help them sustain their operations, said Jean Harvey, interim dean of UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a co-director of the project.

UVM faculty, in combination with ARS staff, are ideally suited to that task, Harvey said.  “We have agricultural economists, dairy specialists, agronomists, experts who study environmental issues, data modelers, consumer preference specialists and social scientists – all of them focused on Vermont’s small farms and value-added producers,” she said. “We believe the end-product of this joint project with ARS will have tremendous value for the small farm sector in Vermont, in the region and across the country.”

ARS has maintained long-standing collaborations with universities across the country. The UVM project is another opportunity to partner with academia to find solutions to critical issue related to agriculture.

Small farms account for roughly 89 percent of all farms in America, according to the UDSA’s Economic Research Service.

The Agricultural Research Service was created in 1952 to be the USDA’s primary scientific research agency. Its main focus is on research to develop solutions to agricultural problems and to disseminate that data. ARS research complements the work of state colleges and universities, agricultural experiment stations, other federal and state agencies, and the private sector. Its research, as in the case of the collaboration with UVM, often focuses on regional issues that have national implications, and where there is a clear federal role.

Source: UVM News

Life on the Mississippi

When did the journey begin? 

Maya Dizack and Michael McGuire take a moment to settle on an answer. Friends since eighth grade in Racine, Wisconsin, and fellow students in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, they teamed up on an ambitious Mississippi River project this summer. While Dizack paddled the river, monitoring water quality along the way, McGuire drove the land route as support and photo/video documentarian. 

May 24 or May 25? Well, technically, on the 24th Dizack put her kayak in the narrow stream flowing from Lake Itasca, the mighty Mississippi’s meek origin. But her hull immediately cracked. So, a day and a drive to the boat repair shop in Bemidji later, the paddle south began, officially, on May 25. 

This was adventure with a purpose, driven by concern over pervasive microplastics in the environment. Their trip happened to coincide with publication of a study published in Environmental Science and Technology indicating the average person ingests at least 50,000 particles of microplastics a year and inhales a similar quantity. (CNN estimated that’s equivalent to eating a credit card every week.) Dizack gathered water samples along the length of the river, as both students helped spread awareness via social media and in conversations with the people they met, partnering with the 1 Mississippi river advocacy group. 

Field science is seldom simple; but Hurricane Barry and epic flooding added particular challenge. Dizack recalls a day when a super-cell storm churned up fast, black clouds turning purple, lightning bolts. The nearest dry land was the exposed rise of a broken levee; on the other side, miles of submerged cornfield. On that day and others, Dizack found her way to safety thanks to the help of strangers, “river angels” in paddler parlance. Looking back on the trip, she counts those human interactions among her best memories. “Those people are…” Dizack says, and McGuire finishes the sentence, “so kind.” 

Though Dizack pulled her boat from the water on July 25 at the point where the Atchafalya River branches from the Mississippi, 150 miles north of New Orleans, this summer project continues. Freezers in the Aiken Center hold many one-liter bottles of Mississippi River water to analyze for microplastics, and McGuire’s laptop holds hours and hours of video to be edited into the story of a summer of work on and for America’s iconic river.

 

Kayak on Mississippi as seen from above

 

The Mississippi River in summer

 

Maya Dizack paddles on the Mississippi

Source: UVM News

Naturally Occurring Fungi Could Curb Moose Tick Plague, UVM Entomologists Find

Cheryl Sullivan was in the woods one warm October day, flicking yet another tick from her leg, “which felt like the tenth of the day,” she says.

Lyme-disease bearing deer ticks like the ones climbing on Sullivan, a Ph.D. student in UVM’s Entomology Research Lab, were certainly causing problems for humans, she remembers thinking. But a different species – the winter tick – was an even worse scourge for one of the northern woods most iconic species, the moose, for whom the parasite was an existential threat. A 2018 study published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology found that winter ticks, also known as moose ticks, were the primary cause of an unprecedented 70 percent death rate among moose calves in northern New England over a three-year period.

“I was thinking about the work that we did at the lab, and it’s like, gosh, I wonder if granular fungus would work on moose ticks,” she says, referring to the insect-killing fungi in granular formulation her colleagues had used to effectively control pests like the pear thrips, which attacks maple trees.

Two years later, more than 30,000 moose tick larvae have taken up residence at the lab, and Sullivan and her advisors, entomologists Bruce Parker and Margaret Skinner, have demonstrated that natural bio-pesticide formulations containing fungi like Metarhizium anisopliae have the potential to derail the moose tick epidemic. 

In the lab, the fungus, depending on dose and application method, kills 37 to 100 percent of the larvae it comes in contact with.

Horror movie

No tick species inspires much human affection, but the winter tick’s habits are especially gruesome. Unlike the deer tick, which attaches itself to three progressively larger hosts over a two-year cycle, the winter tick limits itself to one host –a large ungulate like a moose, elk or sometimes a cow or horse – and lives for just one year.

In the spring, winter tick females drop off their host, lay eggs and die. The larvae hatch in the summer, clump together in groups of several thousand and lie dormant at the soil surface.

In fall the larval clusters seem to borrow a scene from a horror movie.

To quest for a host, they shimmy up vegetation en masse, seen above. When one comes into their vicinity, which the larvae can both see and sense via chemicals like CO2 or the heat and vibrations they emanate, they climb on top of one another to form a bloodthirsty strand. When the top tick reaches the host, those below swing on board.

“It’s kind of like follow the leader,” Sullivan says.

That coordinated group behavior, multiplied many times over, is why dead moose are discovered covered with an average of 47,000 ticks, making them anemic and vulnerable to a host of threats, a condition calves are especially prone to.

Climate change is a key driver of the moose tick plague. Shorter, warmer winters make it more likely that adult moose ticks will land on earth and leaves when they drop off their hosts rather than snow and ice, which kill the parasites before they can lay eggs. And longer falls extend the questing period.

Returning the favor

If the winter tick is a ruthless killer, the remedy Sullivan, Parker and Skinner have in mind returns the favor and then some.

The Metarhizium anisopliae fungus, which has many different strains that occur naturally in the soil, is a natural enemy of the tick, which it kills by penetrating its cuticle or outer shell.

That occurs in two ways, Parker says. “One is a mechanical pressure that the fungus exerts. The other is by emitting chemicals that help dissolve” the outer layer. Once inside, more chemicals are emitted by the fungus that “kill or completely engulf the inner portion of the tick.”  

While the approach is promising in the lab, more work needs to be done before the team is ready to say it will work in the field. 

“There are a lot of dimensions to that,” Sullivan says. A key one is finding the optimal habitat for both moose and the fungi and then determining exactly how and at what rate to apply the granular formulation.

If and when that happens, the winter tick larva’s habits could make it especially vulnerable. The fungi inhabit the same mix of soil and leaves that larvae find attractive, both thrive in warm, humid conditions, and the larvae’s long dormancy during the summer gives the fungi ample opportunity to find and neutralize clusters.

While naturally occurring fungi are probably killing tick larvae to a limited degree, Sullivan and her colleagues envision one day spreading granular Metarhizium anisopliae throughout a localized area of prime moose habitat, once they’ve worked out the application and dosage challenges.

 “If we can give nature a hand by boosting the fungal components that are already in the ecosystem,” she says, “that could be a difference-maker.”  

The research project has received support from the U.S .Fish & Wildlife Service; Wildlife & Sport Fish Restoration Program, Wildlife Restoration Grants, U.S. Geological Survey and the American Wildlife Conservation Foundation. It is part of an ongoing partnership between the USGS Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, the UVM Wildlife and Fisheries Biology Program, and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

Source: UVM News

Installation Ceremony Makes Garimella Presidency Official

With regal marches and a hefty mace, a presidential medallion and the bright silks of regalia, all of the traditions of the academy, the University of Vermont formally installed Suresh Garimella as its 27th president on the afternoon of Thursday, Oct. 3. 

UVM faculty, staff and students; alumni; state and national leaders, including Gov. Phil Scott ’80 and Sen. Patrick Leahy; and colleagues, friends and family of President Garimella filled Ira Allen Chapel. A succession of speakers offered their views on the mission of higher education—particularly what that means for helping meet the challenges that face contemporary Vermont—and several also shared personal perspectives gained from working with Garimella.

National Science Foundation director and past president of Purdue University France A. Córdova delivered the installation address. She noted that an interdisciplinary mindset characterized Garimella’s approach as he served on her leadership team at Purdue. “This approach is becoming one of the defining characteristics of today’s successful and productive endeavors,” Cordova said. “The ‘coming together’ or ‘convergence’ of disciplines, of science and humanistic approaches, introduces new perspectives and generates new ways to solve even the most difficult questions.”

Other colleagues from his two decades on the faculty at Purdue University spoke to Garimella’s professional achievements as a research scientist, teacher, and academic leader, but also his energy, drive, humor, warmth, and caring. “Suresh is delightfully demanding,” said Carolyn Woo, Distinguished President’s Fellow for Global Development at Purdue. Longtime research collaborator and friend Jayathi Murthy, dean of the Samueli School of Engineering at UCLA, noted Garimella’s support for women scientists. “His lab always seems to produce these confident and successful young women who, to this day, will tell you what a phenomenal experience they had in his lab. Suresh’s support of diversity is real and comes from deep belief.” Poet/Purdue professor emerita of English Marianne Boruch dusted off a phrase with a plain Midwestern ring of truth: “He’s a good egg.” 

After the formal installation—handed the Class of 1927 Memorial Mace by alumni, faculty, staff, student, and board leadership; the President’s Medallion placed around his neck by Board Chair David Daigle ’89, Garimella delivered his presidential address. 

Noting that the lectern he stood behind once belonged to the great John Dewey, UVM Class of 1879, Garimella spoke to the university’s place in history as leaders of equality and opportunity in American higher education. He celebrated UVM’s land grant heritage and noted that having the desk of Land Grant Act author Sen. Justin Morrill’s in his office “is to me the greatest perk of my position.”

The 27th president also touched on more recent history, thanking 26th president Tom Sullivan for the “greatest gift of taking on leadership of a university that is on a great trajectory and brimming with optimism.”

Garimella outlined a “three-fold mindset” he sees as charting UVM’s way forward. It begins with students. “We all can agree that our most solemn responsibility is to the success of our students,” he said, stressing the importance of the highest quality education, mentorship, experiential learning, all critical to preparing for success after graduation. Affordability and accessibility of a UVM education is also central to that success, he added. 

Garimella called for enhanced focus on areas where the university traditionally excels, “to double down on strengths UVM is known for and enhance our reputation and renown in these areas and contribute knowledge for the betterment of society and to solve global challenges.”

And the third part of the framework is fully embracing and celebrating the land grant mission. “Senator Morrill’s land grant vision speaks to our responsibility to bring the significant assets of our university to bear on our community,” Garimella said. Turning to the dignitaries assembled behind him on the stage, he caught the eye of Phil Scott and added, “Governor Scott, I sincerely believe that the success of our state is inextricably linked with the success of UVM.”

Garimella’s address included his recitation of a short poem written by Indian poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Rabindranath Tagore in 1913. Garimella first read and memorized the poem in grade school, and it has remained meaningful to him throughout his life. As he concluded his remarks, UVM’s new president led into his final sentiments with a nod to Tagore’s opening verse: “I wish for all of us, ‘a mind without fear and a head held high’ as we work to enable our students’ bright future. You have my commitment to contribute all I can in our upcoming journey together.” 

Source: UVM News

Talking with Michael Mann

With the election of Donald Trump, denial of climate change has reached the highest level of U.S. government. “We’ve returned to the madhouse,” says pioneering climate scientist Michael Mann, Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State.

Mann will speak at the University of Vermont on Thursday, October 10, to address what this policy of denial means for today’s politics and the future. His talk will be held at Ira Allen Chapel, 4:30-5:30pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Winner of the AAAS Public Engagement with Science Award and the Tyler Prize—and renowned for his work on the famed “hockey stock graph” of spiking global temperatures—Mann will review the evidence of climate change, and identify efforts by special interests to confuse the public and attack science. He’ll also explain why he’s optimistic we can avert climate catastrophe.

UVM science writer Joshua Brown spoke with Mann to learn more about his views and what he might have to say to UVM students and scientists about their role in the momentous conversations and battles over our warming planet:

How are climate change politics different now than they were before the Trump era?

Just before Donald Trump became president, cartoonist Tom Toles and I wrote a book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy. At that time, we were criticized by some colleagues who said: “Why are you writing a book about climate change denial? We’re past that now. From here on, it’s all going to be about solutions and action.” There was a false complacency—we can now see, of course—because we went on to elect the first climate-change-denying president.

He’s not only averse to acting on climate, but literally dismissed it as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. So we are certainly still very much in the madhouse, where the chief executive of our nation is in denial that the greatest threat that we arguably face even exists.

And yet, I’m cautiously optimistic about some developments. We do see a number of Republicans now moving in the direction of acknowledging that climate change exists and moving onto the worthy debate about what to do about it.

And the youth climate movement is a positive development. We’re seeing powerful activism on the part of children and college students who recognize that they must become part of the discussion about policies that will determine what sort of world they will soon live in. So younger folks have seized the narrative and re-centered the larger public conversation where it needs to be: not just about science or politics or economics—but about our ethical obligation to not leave behind a degraded planet for future generations.

Many University of Vermont students are actively involved in the fight against climate change. What’s your message to them?

They’re doing what they need to be doing! Keep going. The paralysis in our politics is partially a product of the lack of engagement by young people. If they don’t get out and use their voices in every way possible, then we’re going to get politicians who are in the hip pocket of fossil-fuel interests rather than politicians who are willing to do what’s right for all of us.

There’s strength in numbers. Demonstrations and marches are empowering because you see your friends, your colleagues—and you realize you’re all in this together. We need them at the ballot box too. Now it’s about organizing and making sure that voters get out. That’s what needs to happen if we are to combat the forces of denial and delay.

You’re famous for being a scientist who has unveiled some of the essential dynamics of climate change. How much is climate change the primary problem versus being just a symptom of other deeper troubles in the human experience?

That’s a great question and it alludes to an answer. Climate change denialism is symptomatic of a much larger problem, which is the loss of faith in our public discourse and in our politics. Our political process has been captured by moneyed interests with an agenda that does not align with the interests of the public. So, if we do have a larger problem, then the solution to the larger problem is the same one: participating more deeply in the political process.

UVM has a robust research community working on a range of questions about climate change—from applied public policy to basic science. When you talk with other scientists, what do you suggest to them about their stance on public engagement and activism?

We tend to compartmentalize things as scientists. When we wear the hat of the scientist, we’re in the lab, crunching numbers, writing up articles, advising students, attending meetings. That’s the way we do science. And then there’s this other thing that we do: being citizens. Well, you know, it turns out that the science that we’re doing has real-world implications, policy implications. If we don’t help to inform those larger conversations then we leave behind a vacuum that can be filled by voices who don’t have the public in mind.

In 2014, I wrote a New York Times op-ed, “If You See Something, Say Something” about the importance of scientists stepping up and participating in the larger conversation. I don’t think scientists should have to apologize for being advocates for an informed policy discussion. In my own efforts, I shy away from trying to dictate what policies should be made to solve our climate problem. Rather, I see my role as making sure that those discussions are informed by objective assessments of what the science has to say and what the risks are.

Scientists who choose to participate in the public sphere have to be comfortable with that role. It’s certainly fine for some scientists to stay in a laboratory, stick to only doing science. I know some scientists who absolutely shouldn’t be out there trying to communicate to the public!

But there is a role for those who have an inclination to do so—and that should be encouraged and recognized. We tend to compartmentalize and yet it’s impossible to build a strict firewall between our identity as scientists and our identity as citizens. So it’s a matter of being open about what role you’re playing. Sometimes you’re speaking about the science that you do. Other times, you’re weighing in as a citizen who cares about the planet, and his or her children and what we’re leaving behind. We don’t leave our citizenship at the laboratory door.

We’re still citizens and we have a right to speak out about what we think the implications of science are. And, what we have to say can be informed by our expertise in science. For example, some scientists are especially well-equipped to discuss risk. It’s a matter of finding your own voice. Don’t try to be Carl Sagan. Be who you are, because authenticity is critical. What conversation could be more important—so what’s your role?

Michael Mann’s lecture is part of the Dan and Carole Burack President’s Distinguished Lecture series at the University of Vermont and is sponsored by the Department of Geology, with support from the Gund Institute for Environment, the Environmental Program, the Consulting Archeology Program, the Geography Department, and the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.

Source: UVM News

Inventing the World’s Strongest Silver

A team of scientists has made the strongest silver ever—42 percent stronger than the previous world record. But that’s not the important point.

“We’ve discovered a new mechanism at work at the nanoscale that allows us to make metals that are much stronger than anything ever made before—while not losing any electrical conductivity,” says Frederic Sansoz, a materials scientist and mechanical engineering professor at the University of Vermont who co-led the new discovery.

This fundamental breakthrough promises a new category of materials that can overcome a traditional trade-off in industrial and commercial materials between strength and ability to carry electrical current.

The team’s results were published on September 23 in the journal Nature Materials.

Rethinking the defect

All metals have defects. Often these defects lead to undesirable qualities, like brittleness or softening. This has led scientists to create various alloys or heavy mixtures of material to make them stronger. But as they get stronger, they lose electrical conductivity.

“We asked ourselves, how can we make a material with defects but overcome the softening while retaining the electroconductivity,” said Morris Wang, a lead scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and co-author of the new study.

By mixing a trace amount of copper into the silver, the team showed it can transform two types of inherent nanoscale defects into a powerful internal structure. “That’s because impurities are directly attracted to these defects,” explains Sansoz. In other words, the team used a copper impurity—a form of doping or “microalloy” as the scientists style it—to control the behavior of defects in silver. Like a kind of atomic-scale jiu-jitsu, the scientists flipped the defects to their advantage, using them to both strengthen the metal and maintain its electrical conductivity.

To make their discovery, the team—including experts from UVM, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the Ames Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and UCLA—started with a foundational idea of materials engineering: as the size of a crystal—or grain—of material gets smaller, it gets stronger. Scientists call this the Hall-Petch relation. This general design principle has allowed scientists and engineers to build stronger alloys and advanced ceramics for over 70 years. It works very well.

Until it doesn’t. Eventually, when grains of metal reach an infinitesimally tiny size—under tens of nanometers wide—the boundaries between the grains become unstable and begin to move. Therefore, another known approach to strengthening metals like silver uses nanoscale “coherent twin boundaries,” which are a special type of grain boundary. These structures of paired atoms—forming a symmetrical mirror-like crystalline interface—are exceedingly strong to deformation. Except that these twin boundaries, too, become soft when their interspacing falls under a critical size of a few nanometers, due to imperfections.

Unprecedented properties

Very roughly speaking, nanocrystals are like patches of cloth and nanotwins are like strong but tiny threads in the cloth. Except they’re at the atomic scale. The new research combines both approaches to make what the scientists call a “nanocrystalline-nanotwinned metal,” that has “unprecedented mechanical and physical properties,” the team writes.

That’s because the copper atoms, slightly smaller than the atoms of silver, move into defects in both the grain boundaries and the twin boundaries. This allowed the team—using computer simulations of atoms as a starting point and then moving into real metals with advanced instruments at the National Laboratories—to create the new super-strong form of silver. The tiny copper impurities within the silver inhibit the defects from moving, but are such a small amount of metal—less than one percent of the total—that the rich electrical conductivity of silver is retained. “The copper atom impurities go along each interface and not in between,” Sansoz explains. “So they don’t disrupt the electrons that are propagating through.”

Not only does this metal overcome the softening previously observed as grains and twin boundaries get too small—the so-called “Hall-Petch breakdown”—it even exceeds the long-standing theoretical Hall-Petch limit. The team reports an “ideal maximum strength” can be found in metals with twin boundaries that are under seven nanometers apart, just a few atoms. And a heat-treated version of the team’s copper-laced silver has a hardness measure above what had been thought to be the theoretical maximum.

“We’ve broken the world record, and the Hall-Petch limit too, not just once but several times in the course of this study, with very controlled experiments,” says Sansoz.

Sansoz is confident that the team’s approach to making super-strong and still-conductive silver can be applied to many other metals.  “This is a new class of materials and we’re just beginning to understand how they work,” he says. And he anticipates that the basic science revealed in the new study can lead to advances in technologies—from more efficient solar cells to lighter airplanes to safer nuclear power plants. “When you can make material stronger, you can use less of it, and it lasts longer,” he says, “and being electrically conductive is crucial to many applications.”

Source: UVM News

Suresh Garimella to Be Officially Inaugurated as University of Vermont’s 27th President at Oct. 3 Installation Ceremony

Suresh Garimella will be officially inaugurated as the University of Vermont’s 27th president at an installation ceremony to be held Thursday, Oct. 3, at 1:30 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel.

Guests are asked to be seated in the chapel by 1 p.m. 

Before beginning his UVM presidency on July 1, Garimella served in variety of leadership roles at Purdue University, most recently as executive vice president for research and partnerships. He was also the Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue and has been an active researcher throughout his academic career.

In addition, he is an advisor to several national organizations, including as a member of the National Science Board, which establishes the policies of the National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the President on matters related to science and science education.

A number of prominent figures Garimella has worked with will speak about the president at the ceremony.

They include National Science Foundation director France A. Córdova; Carolyn Woo, Distinguished President’s Fellow for Global Development at Purdue and former president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services; Jayathi Murthy, Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science; and Marianne Boruch, professor of English emerita at Purdue and a distinguished poet.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, Vermont Governor Phil Scott and UVM board chair David Daigle will also make remarks, as will President Garimella.

“The formal investiture of Dr. Garimella as UVM’s new president is a special day for the university,” said UVM board chair David Daigle. “He possesses the intellect, vision, leadership skills, academic credentials and experience to be a highly successful president, and we are thrilled that his tenure is underway.” 

Academic procession to precede ceremony

The installation ceremony will be preceded at 1 p.m. by an academic procession from University Place to the Ira Allen Chapel. The procession will include representatives from over 30 universities and colleges, members of the University of Vermont faculty and emeriti faculty, university governance leaders, members of the Board of Trustees and other invited guests.  

Members of the university community are encouraged to view the procession by lining up along University Place.

The academic procession and installation ceremony will also be livestreamed at the following address: https://www.youtube.com/user/universityofvermont/live

Following the installation, there will be a reception on the University Green around the fountain that all members of the university and surrounding community are invited to attend.  In the event of inclement weather, the reception will be held in the atrium in Ifshin Hall.

For more information on the installation ceremony, see https://www.uvm.edu/trustees/installation/ 

Source: UVM News

A Life of Learning

Granted, stating that a university president is pro-education might be filed under things we could really just assume. Right? But listen to Suresh Garimella at a public event or talk with him in conversation, and you sense a critical shade of difference—gratitude for education’s impact on his life is core to his character. And commitment to pay that forward, to just as great an extent, has been a driving force in his career, from peer advisor as an undergraduate in India, to a professor of mechanical engineering and academic leader at Purdue University, to his new role, the University of Vermont’s twenty-seventh president. 

Last February, meeting the campus community for the first time at a forum in the Davis Center, Garimella spoke to what intrigued him about leading UVM. Among the attractions, coming to the home state of Justin Smith Morrill, the Vermont senator who advocated for the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Acts, a milestone in making higher education more widely accessible across economic class and leveraging the knowledge of universities in support of their communities. “Creating the land grant university system was one of the greatest experiments in higher education,” Garimella said. 

In April, during an interview at his office in Purdue University’s Hovde Hall, he reflected, “I was brought up in a public-school environment. Middle-class family, so public schooling, both in high school and in college, means a lot to me.” Raised in Bhopal, at the geographic heart of India, Garimella’s family later moved to the southeast region of the country. Throughout his childhood, passionate, committed teachers were a formative influence on him, regardless of the subject matter. “I loved them all; they were wonderful. So much so that by the time I graduated from high school I could have imagined pursuing English literature, history, medicine, or engineering.”

Garimella’s father, Sastry, worked as an engineer; his mother, Radha, was at home, with a laser focus on her three children’s educations. Garimella remembers her vigilance over their homework: “Nothing was more important to her than our studies.” Suresh’s brother, Srinivas, is a professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech; his sister, Usha, recently retired as a director at SC Johnson. “I don’t think we’d be where we are without that support for our studies,” Garimella says. “What my parents had to bequeath us was education, which they did in spades.”

That ethic passed to the next generation. Suresh and Lakshmi Garimella’s home in West Lafayette, Indiana, included a den with a large desk for Suresh and two smaller ones for daughter, Shruthi, and son, Sanjay. While Suresh graded tests or wrote articles, Lakshmi Garimella shares, the kids did their homework, dad at hand to help. 

When Garimella graduated from high school, engineering prevailed among his diverse interests, gaining admission to the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, among the most highly competitive universities worldwide. That passion for learning took root. “I enjoyed classes, which was kind of an odd thing,” he says. “It was fashionable to say you didn’t care about class and be all cynical about it. I wasn’t.”

Looking back, Adult Suresh reflects that maybe College Suresh could have allowed himself just a bit more fun, beyond the study breaks he took for tennis or roller-skating. Outside of the classroom, the most lasting impact of Garimella’s college years was found working as an advisor in a peer guidance program. At a university where students faced enormous stress to measure up academically, Garimella embraced the work of helping peers navigate personal and academic issues. Years later, as a faculty member, building those kinds of connections with his students would be fundamental to his teaching approach.


The Garimella family. Suresh has been married since 1993 to Lakshmi. Daughter, Shruthi, is a junior at Purdue University; son, Sanjay, entered Purdue this fall.

Ask a handful of Suresh Garimella’s Purdue University colleagues to give you a sense of him, and some consistent themes emerge. Family man, above all. Engaging. Widely read. Lover of the arts. Meticulous. Honest. Bright, but also wise. Sharp-witted. A mover. “Fasten your seat belt,” says Marietta Harrison, professor of pharmacology and special advisor for strategic initiatives in the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships. “Suresh sets a fast timeline and a high bar.” 

Ask Suresh Garimella to give you a sense of himself, and you’ll get reluctance bordering on resistance. Posed with a question about his childhood, he says, “I’m not good at this. So, I will tell you that I don’t talk a lot about myself… ever.”

There is some valuing of his privacy in that, of course. But there is also, one senses, something along the lines of bemusement at the fuss of having a “presidential profile” written, portraits taken. He doesn’t seem much for the trappings of leadership. He says at one point during our interview at Purdue, “I still don’t consider myself an administrator. And I don’t mean that in any other way than that I feel, fundamentally, I am a faculty member.”

Eventually, Garimella concedes and rattles off a few of his avocations. Reading: historical fiction to biography to that ever-growing stack of issues of The Economist. Movies: Dr. Zhivago is his all-time favorite; he’s watched all of Greta Garbo’s films. Gardening: “I’m not a fancy gardener, a master gardener, by any means, but I have some luck with plants.” But the schedule of a vice president or a president doesn’t allow much time for tomatoes, Garbo, or The Economist, Garimella acknowledges. He will not be rototilling the back lawn of Englesby House anytime soon. 

As Garimella rose through the faculty ranks at Purdue, he began to think more broadly about how science could impact policy. A Jefferson Science Fellowship in the U.S. State Department in 2010 presented the opportunity to put that thought into play. As a Jefferson Fellow, Garimella offered his perspective as science advisor on foreign policy issues around world events such as the Fukushima nuclear disaster or rare earth mineral disputes between China and Japan. Under other Obama administration initiatives, Garimella worked to identify opportunities for academic engagement with Muslim-majority countries, build a higher education dialogue with India, and help share clean energy and climate change expertise with Latin American nations. In 2018, Garimella was appointed by President Trump to the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation and also serves as an independent body of advisors to both the president and Congress.

Similarly, Garimella’s administrative leadership roles at Purdue focused largely upon better connecting the university with the world beyond campus. Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana for eight years prior to becoming Purdue’s president in 2013, gave Garimella wide latitude to develop initiatives. The university forged diverse partnerships—from the auto industry to the government of Colombia—often with the related benefits of enriching the academic experience of students and boosting Indiana’s economy. Putting it simply, Garimella says, “We sought to bring Purdue’s assets to bear on the community. I was a convener.” 

His essay titled “Expanding the Global Reach of the Twenty-First Century Research University” in Science & Diplomacy shares Purdue’s work on this front and also offers a look into Garimella’s vision of how that nineteenth-century American land grant ideal might be realized in our twenty-first-century global landscape. 

“Yet another driver for our global engagement—indeed an overarching reason for it—is the potential exposure to new problems and new ideas that increase our knowledge, creativity, productivity, and impact. While pure intellectual curiosity often undergirds the desire for global engagement, the recognition of multiple vantage points from which to assess challenges can make us more agile and innovative,” he writes.  

Suresh Garimella with SGA President Jillian Scannell
President Garimella talks with Jillian Scannell ’20, president of the Student Government Association.

Among the multiple roles and titles Garimella has held throughout his thirty-year career in academia, there is none he values as deeply as teacher. Mentor to nearly a hundred graduate students across the years, Garimella notes that twenty-seven alumni from his research group are in faculty positions worldwide. “Training students to be faculty members is the most comprehensive training you can give them,” Garimella says, and suggests being part of that chain of knowledge is an academic’s most lasting legacy.

Certain Purdue undergraduate engineering students, those who preferred a seat in the back row and the comfort of relative anonymity, might have squirmed a bit in Professor Suresh Garimella’s classes. He connected names and faces in the first weeks of the semester and pushed students to come in and meet one-on-one during office hours. “I wasn’t doing this to impress; I just care about them,” Garimella says, an echo of his undergrad years as a peer counselor. “I think I’m better at that personal interaction than I am at science.”

Student success, coupled with boosting the research enterprise and reaffirming the land grant mission, is at the top of three refrains emerging in the first months of Garimella’s UVM presidency. As priorities are set and decisions are made, their impact upon providing the best possible education and experience for students will be the primary filter.  

Though UVM faces some particular challenges in regard to funding and declining numbers of high school students in the northeast, Garimella notes that many of the issues are the same across American higher education. Take tuition, where Purdue drew a line by not raising the rate across the past seven years. “At some point, what gives?” Garimella says. “You can’t just keep increasing the tuition. We need to research options, think of efficiencies, think of other revenue sources, different ways of doing business.”

As he gets to know the institution he leads and begins to chart that way forward, there are many people to meet. Students and faculty in line for lunch at the Davis Center. Business leaders at luncheons in Vermont. Legislators in the marble halls of Montpelier and Washington, D.C. Alumni at receptions in New York City. Catamount fans in the bleachers of Virtue Field. It’s a part of the process that Garimella especially embraces. Learning, broadening his viewpoint, is essential to who he is. “I could talk to anyone for a long time. Everyone has interesting perspectives,” he says. “You’re making me talk today. But usually I’m the one asking the questions.”

Source: UVM News

University of Vermont to Join FAA’s ASSURE Consortium

As the popularity and usage of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), commonly referred to as drones, continues to grow, keeping the nation’s airspace system safe has become a critically important goal for the Federal Aviation Administration.

To help accomplish that objective, the University of Vermont has joined the FAA’s Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence, or ASSURE, alongside 23 of the world’s leading research institutions and 100 industry and government partners. Consortium members together provide the expertise and infrastructure needed to help the FAA conduct the research and testing necessary to make laws that keep the skies safe.

As part of the FAA’s Center for Excellence, the University of Vermont’s Spatial Analysis Laboratory will research the use of drones in disaster situations, providing the agency with data for their safe operations in times of disaster.

“UVM’s Spatial Analysis Lab has been a critical resource for the State of Vermont and local communities that need new tools to plan for and recover from disasters,” said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) “I’m delighted that they will be lending their expertise to ASSURE, which has a vital mission to develop research in crucial areas that inform decision makers at the FAA about the rapidly changing UAS landscape.” As the vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Leahy has increased funding for the FAA’s Center of Excellence for UAS Research over the past two fiscal years and included guidance for the Center to expand its work around disaster recovery. 

“The airspace during an emergency or disaster has always had rescue and media helicopters,” said Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, director of the UVM’s Spatial Analysis Laboratory.“Today the space can also become crowded with drones – from the fire department, state and federal agencies, the media, even the person down the street who wants to shoot a YouTube video. UAS are an exciting new technology that could revolutionize disaster response, but there is a lot of work to be done if we are to employ them in a safe an effective manner. We look forward to working with FAA and our partners in ASSURE to help advance UAS for disaster response.”

“This partnership is a good fit for UVM,” said Richard Galbraith, vice president for research at the university. “Our Spatial Analysis Laboratory pioneered the use of UAS in monitoring emergencies and disasters in 2013. We have learned from experience how much this fast growing area of drone use needs regulation and oversight to prevent redundancy and keep everyone safe.”

Since ASSURE was established in 2015, the agency has worked alongside the FAA and manufacturers to provide guidance in creating a regulatory framework for drone use. Since then, ASSURE members have helped the FAA establish policy and training in areas ranging from air traffic control to flight over people and beyond line of sight.

“We’re thrilled to welcome the University of Vermont into the ASSURE network,” said Stephen Luxion, ASSURE’s executive director. “The university’s expertise in the incorporation of UAS during emergencies and disasters is extensive and will provide excellent use cases, as well as critical training and recommendations for the safe integration of UAS into our daily lives.”

The Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE) consists of 25 of the world’s leading research institutions and more than 100 leading industry/government partners. ASSURE members are core to three FAA UAS test sites, lead four FAA research centers, have seven airfields and a fleet of 340 UAS – 24 more than the USAF. ASSURE’s goal is to provide the FAA with the research it needs to efficiently integrate UAS into our National Airspace System.

Source: UVM News