Ruth A. Hufbauer, Colorado State University
Google Scholar Profile CV (as a pdf, Jan 2021) PNAS write-up that includes our research!
ruth.hufbauer@colostate.edu, C205B Plant Sciences
Department of Agricultural Biology, Director, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology
News and other thoughts
27 October 2021. Eliza Clark is getting a USDA Predoctoral Fellowship! Woooot! She proposed some really cool experiments and sampling, and I'm so proud of her!
15 September 2021. (but written later...). Marcel Jardeleza's research from her MS degree is out in Ecological Entomology. In it she has a really intriguing data showing incredibly strong phenotypic plasticity in response to temperature, and no support for local adaptation.
3 September 2021. Welcome to the Fall semester!
22 June 2021. Our proposal to the NSF ADVANCE Adaptation program, CSU STEPs for Gender Equity, is going to be funded!! This is very exciting work. I'm lead PI, with co-PIs Meena Balgopal (College of Natural Sciences), Emily Fischer (College of Engineering), and Gregg Dean (College of Vet Med and Biomedical Sciences) and Senior Personnel Shannon Archibeque Engle (Associate VP for Diversity), Sue James (Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs) and Heather Novak (Institutional Research). What a dream team! The President and the Provost are also supporting the work in financially substantial ways, and I'm sure that helped with the decision to fund. Hooray! May the good work begin.
24 February 2021. 2020 was a slow year for me publications-wise (more opinion pieces that peer-reviewed papers!), but with multiple things now in review, 2021 looks like it will be better. It was fun working on helping folks (generally junior collaborators) get those papers out the door!
22 January 2021. Welcome to the new semester, everyone! I'm not teaching Ecology (Life 320) for the first time in ages. I miss it! But I'm also happy to have time to work on my other projects - lots of things to do as director of GDPE, like hosting career panels!
28 September 2020. I'm giving a (virtual, of course) seminar at the University of Pittsburg today. The Biology department is full of fantastic people. I'm excited to talk to them.
25 September 2020. Busy busy week. I'm learning what it's like to run a lab, a graduate program, and serve as vice chair of faculty council all at once. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
8 September 2020. The covid time-warp is real. How did it get to be fall, and what is up with this earliest-ever in Fort Collins snow fall?! Brrrr. Lab updates include: Welcome new graduate student Jackie Billotte and Jacqueline Meyer!
1 July 2020. My birthday AND the start of my new position as the Director of GDPE. Woot!
26 June 2020. Marcel defended her MS thesis and did a fantastic job. Congratulations, Marcel! Now on to the PhD. :)
27 April 2020. Faith Campbell wrote a really nice, thoughtful piece about the paper predicting high impact invaders at Invasive Species.
3 April 2020. Amidst this pandemic, some outstanding news! Lily Durkee has been awarded an NSF GRFP proposal! Go, Lily, go!! :)
19 March 2020. We are living in the crazy times of Covid19. Please stay well and healthy out there folks. Keep your 2 meter distance, and just stay home as much as possible. In the lab, we are trying to pare activity to the bare minimum - want to keep just enough going so we can hit the ground running when this calms down.
24 February (February??!) 2020. MS students Marcel Jardeleza and Lily Durkee both won awards at FRSES - the Front Range Student Ecology Symposium. Marcel got 2nd place for her poster, and Lily was awarded first place for her talk. Go gals go!! Marcel's poster focused on the role of phenotypic plasticity in biological invasions - specifically Drisophila suzukii. Lily talked about the role of genetic diversity in adaptation to novel environments. I'm so proud!
4 Nov. 2019. Nathan Havill and Angela Mech gave a great interview about our first paper about predicting high impact invaders to Inside Science.
28 October 2019. I'm in Kent, Ohio, where I'm meeting with the US's greatest forest entomologists at Davey Tree. We are developing a database to predict damaging forest insects. Not a simple task! Our work is supported by the US Forest Service through the NUCFAC program.
21 October 2019. I am sending out the official paperwork for two postdocs this week. Exciting times! Laure Olazcuaga will be working on how evolution can rescue populations from extinction (using Tribolium, with NSF funding). Ashley Schulz will be working on predicting the next big tree pest (funded by this great US Forest Service program)
22 August 2019. I have funding for a postdoc to continue work on what determines whether populations facing environmental change adapt and persist or go extinct. The deadline for full consideration is August 31. Contact me, hufbauer@colostate.edu, with questions.
26 July 2019. I'm working with a local company - the Rocky Mountain Micro-Ranch (RMMR) that rears insects for food. It is so exciting to be planning experimental biology that can help fight world hunger, and produce proteins without using lots of water, and while contributing minimally to green-house gas production.
27 June 2019. It's Official!!!! We've been awarded an NSF grant. We (Brett Melbourne, CU Boulder PhD student Scott Nordstrom, postdoc TBD and I) are going to delve deeper into what enables populations to persist in the face of environmental change.
7 May 2019. Both Eliza Clark and Marcel Jardeleza were granted William M. Brown Professional Development Awards to attend the Ecology Society of America and SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) respectively. Congratulations, both!!
2 May 2019. Woohoo! Laure's paper was indeed accepted. The revision was quite major, and she did a great job on it. Of course everyone contributed, but she did by far the most work on it. Yay, Laure!
1 May 2019. Corinne Moss-Racusin's talk was fantastic. Such important data, described and explained so clearly.
23 April 2019. On May 1, I'm hosting Corinne Moss-Racusin to speak on her fascinating research on... us! She studies diversity and inclusion in STEM disciplines. Her talk is on understanding and overcoming gender bias in STEM. It will be in the LSC North Ballroom. Put it on your calendar! Reception at my house to follow.
25 March 2019. Laure O got her first paper back from review, with a decision of major revision. Fantastic news! In case you aren't familiar with the publication process, that means if we do our job well - take the suggestions seriously and do a good job revising the paper - then it is pretty darned likely to be accepted. This is always good news, but especially for Laure, as in the French PhD system, students must have a paper accepted to graduate.
5 March 2019. Hooray!! Both Eliza Clark and Marcel Jardeleza were awarded RMAIS grants from GDPE. RMAIS stands for Research Mentoring to Advance Inclusivity in Stem. I'm so pleased for both of them. AND this means we have two undergrad positions open in the lab for the summer!
4 March 2019 My second international scientist visiting this spring is Laure Olazcuaga, who has joined the lab from the CBGP (INRA, Montpellier, France) for two months. She's working on analyzing data from two major experiments and writing things up. It's great to have her here.
26 Feb. 2019. This spring semester, I am hosting two visiting scientists and two speakers. First on the list is Javad Karimzadeh who is visiting from Iran. He's an insect ecologist who works mostly on tri-trophic interactions. We are shopping about for interesting project to work on this summer. The office where former postdocs Kathryn Turner and Ellyn Bitume were had been empty for so long that I'd almost forgotten how nice it is to have someone to touch base with. It's great to have Javad here.
ruth.hufbauer@colostate.edu, C205B Plant Sciences
Department of Agricultural Biology, Director, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology
News and other thoughts
27 October 2021. Eliza Clark is getting a USDA Predoctoral Fellowship! Woooot! She proposed some really cool experiments and sampling, and I'm so proud of her!
15 September 2021. (but written later...). Marcel Jardeleza's research from her MS degree is out in Ecological Entomology. In it she has a really intriguing data showing incredibly strong phenotypic plasticity in response to temperature, and no support for local adaptation.
3 September 2021. Welcome to the Fall semester!
22 June 2021. Our proposal to the NSF ADVANCE Adaptation program, CSU STEPs for Gender Equity, is going to be funded!! This is very exciting work. I'm lead PI, with co-PIs Meena Balgopal (College of Natural Sciences), Emily Fischer (College of Engineering), and Gregg Dean (College of Vet Med and Biomedical Sciences) and Senior Personnel Shannon Archibeque Engle (Associate VP for Diversity), Sue James (Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs) and Heather Novak (Institutional Research). What a dream team! The President and the Provost are also supporting the work in financially substantial ways, and I'm sure that helped with the decision to fund. Hooray! May the good work begin.
24 February 2021. 2020 was a slow year for me publications-wise (more opinion pieces that peer-reviewed papers!), but with multiple things now in review, 2021 looks like it will be better. It was fun working on helping folks (generally junior collaborators) get those papers out the door!
22 January 2021. Welcome to the new semester, everyone! I'm not teaching Ecology (Life 320) for the first time in ages. I miss it! But I'm also happy to have time to work on my other projects - lots of things to do as director of GDPE, like hosting career panels!
28 September 2020. I'm giving a (virtual, of course) seminar at the University of Pittsburg today. The Biology department is full of fantastic people. I'm excited to talk to them.
25 September 2020. Busy busy week. I'm learning what it's like to run a lab, a graduate program, and serve as vice chair of faculty council all at once. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
8 September 2020. The covid time-warp is real. How did it get to be fall, and what is up with this earliest-ever in Fort Collins snow fall?! Brrrr. Lab updates include: Welcome new graduate student Jackie Billotte and Jacqueline Meyer!
1 July 2020. My birthday AND the start of my new position as the Director of GDPE. Woot!
26 June 2020. Marcel defended her MS thesis and did a fantastic job. Congratulations, Marcel! Now on to the PhD. :)
27 April 2020. Faith Campbell wrote a really nice, thoughtful piece about the paper predicting high impact invaders at Invasive Species.
3 April 2020. Amidst this pandemic, some outstanding news! Lily Durkee has been awarded an NSF GRFP proposal! Go, Lily, go!! :)
19 March 2020. We are living in the crazy times of Covid19. Please stay well and healthy out there folks. Keep your 2 meter distance, and just stay home as much as possible. In the lab, we are trying to pare activity to the bare minimum - want to keep just enough going so we can hit the ground running when this calms down.
24 February (February??!) 2020. MS students Marcel Jardeleza and Lily Durkee both won awards at FRSES - the Front Range Student Ecology Symposium. Marcel got 2nd place for her poster, and Lily was awarded first place for her talk. Go gals go!! Marcel's poster focused on the role of phenotypic plasticity in biological invasions - specifically Drisophila suzukii. Lily talked about the role of genetic diversity in adaptation to novel environments. I'm so proud!
4 Nov. 2019. Nathan Havill and Angela Mech gave a great interview about our first paper about predicting high impact invaders to Inside Science.
28 October 2019. I'm in Kent, Ohio, where I'm meeting with the US's greatest forest entomologists at Davey Tree. We are developing a database to predict damaging forest insects. Not a simple task! Our work is supported by the US Forest Service through the NUCFAC program.
21 October 2019. I am sending out the official paperwork for two postdocs this week. Exciting times! Laure Olazcuaga will be working on how evolution can rescue populations from extinction (using Tribolium, with NSF funding). Ashley Schulz will be working on predicting the next big tree pest (funded by this great US Forest Service program)
22 August 2019. I have funding for a postdoc to continue work on what determines whether populations facing environmental change adapt and persist or go extinct. The deadline for full consideration is August 31. Contact me, hufbauer@colostate.edu, with questions.
26 July 2019. I'm working with a local company - the Rocky Mountain Micro-Ranch (RMMR) that rears insects for food. It is so exciting to be planning experimental biology that can help fight world hunger, and produce proteins without using lots of water, and while contributing minimally to green-house gas production.
27 June 2019. It's Official!!!! We've been awarded an NSF grant. We (Brett Melbourne, CU Boulder PhD student Scott Nordstrom, postdoc TBD and I) are going to delve deeper into what enables populations to persist in the face of environmental change.
7 May 2019. Both Eliza Clark and Marcel Jardeleza were granted William M. Brown Professional Development Awards to attend the Ecology Society of America and SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) respectively. Congratulations, both!!
2 May 2019. Woohoo! Laure's paper was indeed accepted. The revision was quite major, and she did a great job on it. Of course everyone contributed, but she did by far the most work on it. Yay, Laure!
1 May 2019. Corinne Moss-Racusin's talk was fantastic. Such important data, described and explained so clearly.
23 April 2019. On May 1, I'm hosting Corinne Moss-Racusin to speak on her fascinating research on... us! She studies diversity and inclusion in STEM disciplines. Her talk is on understanding and overcoming gender bias in STEM. It will be in the LSC North Ballroom. Put it on your calendar! Reception at my house to follow.
25 March 2019. Laure O got her first paper back from review, with a decision of major revision. Fantastic news! In case you aren't familiar with the publication process, that means if we do our job well - take the suggestions seriously and do a good job revising the paper - then it is pretty darned likely to be accepted. This is always good news, but especially for Laure, as in the French PhD system, students must have a paper accepted to graduate.
5 March 2019. Hooray!! Both Eliza Clark and Marcel Jardeleza were awarded RMAIS grants from GDPE. RMAIS stands for Research Mentoring to Advance Inclusivity in Stem. I'm so pleased for both of them. AND this means we have two undergrad positions open in the lab for the summer!
4 March 2019 My second international scientist visiting this spring is Laure Olazcuaga, who has joined the lab from the CBGP (INRA, Montpellier, France) for two months. She's working on analyzing data from two major experiments and writing things up. It's great to have her here.
26 Feb. 2019. This spring semester, I am hosting two visiting scientists and two speakers. First on the list is Javad Karimzadeh who is visiting from Iran. He's an insect ecologist who works mostly on tri-trophic interactions. We are shopping about for interesting project to work on this summer. The office where former postdocs Kathryn Turner and Ellyn Bitume were had been empty for so long that I'd almost forgotten how nice it is to have someone to touch base with. It's great to have Javad here.