News

Congratulations to Elizabeth Entwistle who successfully defended her dissertation, Anthropogenic Nitrogen Deposition and Decomposer Fungi: Altered Composition and Function Fosters Greater Soil Carbon Storage. Also congrats to her committee: Don Zak (chair), Ines Ibáñez, Tim James and Greg Dick. Elizabeth has also accepted and begun work as a post-doc at the University of Alabama at Birmingham under Jeff Morris. Her email address there is eentwis@uab.edu. Everyone in the lab wishes you well as you take this next step forward.Once again, Congrats to Dr. Elizabeth Entwistle! ...

Congratulation to Dr. Lauren Cline for receiving a 2015 Distinguished Dissertation Awards from Rackham Graduate School. Lauren is one of only ten recipients from the University of Michigan to receive this honor for their 2015 dissertations. She stopped by to celebrate and receive the award and we were all super excited to see her ...

Don Zak’s manuscript in Global Change Biology, titled “Anthropogenic N Deposition Increases Soil Organic Matter Accumulation Without Altering Its Biochemical Composition” was accepted in August. It’s already out online (manuscript format but regular coming soon) at http://dx.doi.org/0.1111/gcb.13480. Congrats to Don! ...

Karl Romanowicz’s manuscript on what shapes the active and total communities in forest floor, titled “Active microorganisms in forest soils differ from the total community yet are shaped by the same environmental factors: the influence of pH and soil moisture,” was accepted and is out now in FEMS Microbiology Ecology. The link for the paper is http://femsec.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/10/fiw149.abstract?ijkey=1zbz8LGUdUkZ3SC&keytype=ref. It’s also been named as Editor’s Choice. Congrats to Karl! ...

Dr. Zac Freedman has recently made the move to Assistant Professor at West Virginia University in Plant and Soil Sciences. If you would like to contact him, his new email is zachary.freedman@mail.wvu.edu. His website is http://community.wvu.edu/~zbf0001/Home.html  if you would like to see what lab opportunities he has available. We will miss him, but wish him well in his new position (even though he won’t need it) ...

There is a free Michigan Meeting event happening May 16th – 18th in Ann Arbor called: Unseen Partners: Manipulating Microbial Communities that Support Life on Earth. The goal of this meeting is to bring together environmental and health scientists for “presentations from local, national, and international speakers will help identify the underlying principles of microbial systems applicable to both environmental and health sciences.” The meeting information, including schedule and presenters, can be found here http://microbe.med.umich.edu/about/spotlights/michigan-meeting-2016-unseen-partners-manipulating-microbial-communities-support-life-earth ...

Zac Freedman’s manuscript on the Gradient metagenome “Anthropogenic N Deposition Slows Decay by Favoring Bacterial Metabolism: Insights from Metagenomic Analyses” was accepted into Frontiers in Microbiology. It’s out online at this link: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2016.00259/full. Congrats Zac! ...