The Office of Undergraduate Research and the Office of the Vice President for Research recognize outstanding accomplishments in scholarly investigation, artistic creation, or performance by an undergraduate student. Nina has been awarded the EURA for her research in the LOQATE lab. Her work uses hyperspectral imaging to monitor landscape-level patterns of tree health. She currently examines Bur oak spectral responses to heat and high CO₂ to detect stress before it becomes visible.

Through this fellowship, Sam will develop a digital storytelling framework using an ArcGIS Story Map to communicate complex satellite remote sensing and machine learning methodologies and their outputs to stakeholders (e.g., water quality managers, local water boards). Sam hopes that through deliberate, practical translation of complex material, we can improve understanding of current technologies, enabling faster decision-making to protect Iowans.

Beverly will continue the work she started in the spring during the group collaborative fellowship, focusing on the water quality of the Okobojis. We are excited to keep her on and dig more into this research!

Lillie and Beverly will be working in the LOQATE Lab on an Office of Undergraduate Research GCRU Fellowship titled, "Exploring 25 years of water quality in the Iowa Great Lakes using data from the volunteer-led Cooperative Lakes Area Monitoring Project (CLAMP)"

Riley Pacer, Jalissa Pirro, Sam Taylor, and Dr. Meerdink headed to New Orleans this year to present their research at the annual American Geophysical Union conference. It was a resounding success and we had a blast.

This manuscript describes the research initiated during Dr. Meerdink's postdoctoral work at the University of Florida as part of a DARPA project. Dr. Meerdink managed the UF team and adapted the Multiple Instance Adaptive Cosine Estimator (MI-ACE) to detect anthocyanin content.

As an Office of Undergraduate Research Fellow, Nina conducted research this summer titled, "Responses of bur oak leaf physiology and spectroscopy to elevated temperature, CO2 and precipitation variability". She presented this work at the Fall Undergraduate Research Festival.

Riley and Mainul represented our lab very well at the 3MT yesterday! Congratulations to both of you for your hard work. Congratulations to Mainul, who won the People's Choice award for Social Sciences and Humanities.

Congratulations to Sam for being awarded a NASA Iowa Space Grant Fellowship in the amount of $6,000, which will support his dissertation work on detection of harmful algal blooms with remote sensing.

In the Capture Your Research Competition, Mainul won 2nd place for People's Choice, and Jalissa won 3rd place in the Graduate division. Thank you for sharing images from your research. Congratulations!

Jalissa Pirro and Sam Taylor were invited to spend the week at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. They are getting facility tours, participating in PlantCV workshops, and sharing their research, which will be incorporated into PlantCV.

Congratulations to Jalissa Pirro and Mainul Islam for being finalists in the 2025 Capture Your Research Competition! Vote now for the People's Choice Award.

“The bur oak is an icon for Iowa,” says Mainul Islam, a doctoral student in the School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability (SEES). “If you go to any park or backyard here, you will see at least one bur oak tree.”

This summer, Nina Osborne participated in a growth chamber experiment led by Dr. Dannenberg and Dr. Meerdink. Students used the LICOR and spectrometer to measure the response of bur oak leaves to different levels of temperature, precipitation, and carbon dioxide.

A H M Mainul Islam attended the ESA's annual conference in Baltimore to share his research titled, "Exploring the impact of Bur Oak Blight (BOB) on the Photosynthetic Capacity of Bur Oaks".