news • events • accolades

08/2022: Check out this great article about 2022's Calumet Quarter, by Lily Levine! featuring photos and quotes from students and professors.

08/2022: Presented pilot data from our slag research at Ecological Society of America - in Montreal!

07/2022: Appointed to the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization at UChicago.

02/2022: Spoke to UChicago's Environmental Research Group about urban greenspace.

02/2022: Published in Restoration Ecology with collaborators Lauren Umek and Laura Merwin: slag is cool!

01/2022: Interviewed by PGE student Hannah Wilson-Black about the Calumet Quarter.

01/2022: Named a Fellow in the inaugural Faculty Pedagogy Fellows program at UChicago.

12/2021: Taught Urban Ecology in the Great Nearby and students made badass final projects.

10/2021: Collaborator Maddie McLeester presented pilot results of Wisconsin fields research at the Midwest Archaeology Conference.

10/2021: Led Chicago Studies Urban Hike to Beaubien Woods.

08/2021: Fieldwork on the Wisconsin fields project with collaborators Maddie McLeester, Jeff Grignon and Pete Geraci. Honored to visit and hold space in sacred places on Menominee land.

06-08/2021: Mentored student research assistants for tree ecosystem services project for EF Campus.

04/2021: In celebration of Earth Day, had a discussion with conservation ecologist Erika Hasle about the Field Museum's Monarch Butterfly community science program.

02/2021: With Lauren Umek, led discussion on restoration potential of slag at Calumet Restoration Roundtable.

11/2020: Featured along with Chicago's urban ecology in Medicine on the Midway!

11/2020: Served on the review board for the inaugural distribution of Green Fund grants to University of Chicago students.

10/2020: Joined the advisory board for The Nature Conservancy's Chicago Biodiversity project.

07/2020: With collaborators, and field assistants, pursued an abbreviated field season at Big Marsh, setting up plots for long term monitoring of plant community composition on slag.

02/2020: Joined Nootan Bharani and Luke Joyner at a Research Roundtable for Chicago Studies featuring the theme of Connectivity.

12/2019: With Hengxing as the first author, we published our first work on slag vegetation in PLoS One, "Early succession on slag compared to urban soil: a slower recovery"!

08/2019: Undergraduate advisee Hengxing Zou (who starts his PhD training at Rice University this fall!) presented our research, in collaboration with Cathy Pfister, at ESA in Louisville, KY.

SU 2019: Joined the Galapagos Urbanization Trip with Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and Program on the Global Environment. Find updates via Twitter from MI and PGE or the hashtag #UChicagoGalapagos.

06/2019: Was awarded the 2018-19 Faculty Community Impact Award from University of Chicago University Community Service Center.

06/2019: Featured on WBEZ's Curious City after posing the question: How is Chicago doing on its ambitious 2020 climate goals? Read more here. Listen to the podcast here.