Early Career Award
The ENRI Early Career Award recognizes College of Agricultural Sciences faculty, extension educators, and staff who, early in their careers, show exceptional potential for discovery and leadership at the frontiers of knowledge in the environmental and natural resources sciences.
Award description, eligibility, and nomination criteria.
Nominations Due: March 5, 2010
2009 Award Winner
Jason Philip Kaye
Dr. Kaye, who joined the Crop and Soil Sciences faculty in 2005, has been advancing a new model of the terrestrial nitrogen cycle that accounts for the stability of nitrogen retained in soils. The model is providing a mechanistic basis for understanding forest nitrogen retention by explicitly including both biological and abiotic processes that rapidly stabilize nitrogen in soil organic matter. In contrast to forest ecosystems, agricultural ecosystems are notoriously leaky with respect to the nitrogen cycle. Dr. Kaye’s group is systematically exploring nutrient and tillage management practices that may reduce nitrogen pollution to surface water and the atmosphere. In the long-term, their goal is to identify agroecosystem management practices that minimize nitrogen losses while maintaining yields and profitability. Dr. Kaye’s program is marked by its multidisciplinary nature. Dr. Kaye has been working with economists, demographers, geographers, and many other types of social scientists to understand coupled social-ecological systems. Notably, he co-led a strategic planning initiative, solicited and funded by NSF, to outline an agenda for synthetic research in ecology and social sciences over the next decade. He was one of 25 scientists selected to outline a $30 to 40 million research agenda in this area.
2008 Award Winner
Ottar N. Bjørnstad
Dr. Bjørnstad joined the Department of Entomology as an Assistant Professor in 2001. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor, and in 2007 promoted to Full Professor. He currently serves as co-director of the Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics
Dr. Bjørnstad has in a very short time established himself as one of the leading statistical ecologists in the world and has developed an outstanding reputation in the area of spatial/temporal modeling of animal and disease populations. His cutting edge application of statistical modeling combined with ecological theory and observations and/or experimentation has resulted in a remarkable string of high profile papers and has attracted outstanding collaborators across the globe. He routinely publishes in the top scientific journals in the world including three papers in Science, four in Nature, three journal articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA and seven in Ecology. He has published repeatedly in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. He has been highly cited in the professional and public press with over 2,900 citations in the ISI citation index analysis.
