epscor – mattbk.com

I attended the 2010 North Dakota EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) Conference yesterday to see the work of some of my fellow students, but did not submit a poster. There is a good summary here.

UND Geology and Geological Engineering presenters:
– Ted Bibby and Jaakko Putkonen – Landscape evolution of ice free valleys, central Antarctica
– Nic Buer and Phil Gerla – Comparison of nutrient transport and concentration between an invasive-dominated, disturbed wetland and a natural sedge meadow wetland in northwestern Minnesota
– Chase Christenson and Scott Korom – Denitrification at the Oakes Irrigation Test Area, Dickey County, ND
– Rob Klenner and Will Gosnold – Reevaluating terrestrial heat flow in Minnesota
– Risa Madoff, Ted Bibby, Megan Miller and Jaakko Putkonen – Hillslope evolution quantified with digital laser scanning in eastern Sierra Nevada, CA
– Megan Miller, Risa Madoff, Ted Bibby and Jaakko Putkonen – Photo analysis of landscape change in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, California
– Karew Schumaker, Matt Weiler, Joseph Hartman and Allen Kihm – Geology and preliminary paleontology of the Cvancara locality (Paleocene), Tongue River Member of the Fort Union Formation, Grant County, North Dakota
– Vladimir Zivkovic and Will Gosnold – A multiple method geophysical investigation of the northeastern rim of the St. Martin impact structure, Manitoba, Canada

Other posters of note (among many)
– Janna Mabey and Becky Simmons – Phylogeny and generic revision of the Tiger Moth genus Phoenicoprocta (Noctuidae: Arctiinae: Euchromiina) for use in examining the evolution of male courtship signals
– Andy Magness, J.M. Hicks, C. Desgranges and J. Delhommelle – Phase equilibria of polyaromatic hydrocarbons by Hybrid Monte Carlo Wang-Landau simulations

I spent this morning and early afternoon at the North Dakota EPSCoR 2010 State Conference. EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) is a federally funded program to fund states that need additional infrastructure in order to improve their research output. It is funded competitively, and then those funds are distributed within the state towards research projects, facilities, and scholarships. I learned today that North Dakota is the only state that has been funded continuously since the program’s inception in the early 80s. Part of this is supposedly because the state agrees up front beforehand to match the federal money given, something I guess other states aren’t able to do.

The posters (graduate student research projects) were generally very good, although a lot of walking was involved to see everything because of placement on the walls down the main corridor of the Alerus Center. Several of my Geology and Geological Engineering colleagues presented posters, most of them luckily in high-traffic areas. A lot of the material was biochemical in nature, which tended to make me (since I’m not a chemical biologist) gloss over some things I probably shouldn’t have; I would suggest to EPSCoR that in the future the posters be arranged more according to topic, which might have the added benefit of getting students from different institutions to talk to each other about their similar topics.

I’ve scanned the poster session program (includes abstracts), and for general entertainment I shot some photos, shared below.

A geologist explains his project.

Breakfast, the introductory speaker, and some of the many posters were on display in this room.