Land and Food System Scholar Series

Invited scholar: Dr. Megan Bartlett

Hosted by:  Thorsten Knipfer and Risa Sargent, Plant Science

Title: Drought tolerance goes underground: root traits for a drier world

Abstract: Most of plant resistance to water transport from the soil to the canopy during drought comes from the roots. Climate change is expected to increase evapotranspiration and exacerbate soil drying. Developing crops that can maintain water uptake from drier soil is a potential strategy to compensate without increasing dependence on irrigation. I will talk about my lab’s work using grape rootstocks as a diverse study system to identify traits that maintain root water uptake under drought. Our findings show that classic water relations traits that have long been measured for leaves can also be applied to capture root drought tolerance.

Biography: Dr. Megan Bartlett is an assistant professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis. She conducted her Ph.D. research on plant ecophysiology with Dr. Lawren Sack at UCLA and her postdoc research on using optimization theory to understand plant adaptations to drought with Dr. Stephen Pacala at Princeton University. As a plant physiologist, her work is focused on the mechanisms underlying plant drought and heat tolerance. Her research applies insights from fundamental plant physiology to address challenges facing the grape and wine industry.

 

Join in person or via Zoom:

Date: February 9, 2023

Time: 3:00-4:00 PM PST

Location: In-person at Auditorium at Beaty Biodiversity Museum or via Zoom

This presentation will be followed by a meet and greet from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM at Agora Café. Refreshments will be served.

Please register here by Feb 6.

*Note: Admission desk staff will identify in-person attendees before entering the Museum. No food or drinks are permitted in the Museum.

 

Please see below opportunity for your undergraduate and graduate student networks ???? You can also engage with our posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

 

Applications are now open for UBC undergraduate and graduate students to join the Fall 2023 Sustainability Ambassadors cohorts.

 

Bring ideas for human and environmental wellbeing to life, develop your leadership skills and inspire the UBC community to create positive and meaningful change, while building your network and connections with other student leaders through the Sustainability Ambassadors program.

 

Find out more and apply by February 13 at sustain.ubc.ca/armbassadors.

Working as part of a team under the guidance of a Sustainability Lead, Sustainability Ambassadors deliver programming to UBC’s Vancouver campus community based on one of the five themes – biodiversity, climate, climate resilient communities, ethical civic engagement, and justice.

 

Natalie Hawryshkewich (She, Her, Hers)

Communication and Engagement Specialist
Sustainability Hub
The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus | Musqueam Traditional Territory
Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability 2260 West Mall, 2nd Floor | Vancouver BC | V6T 1Z4
Phone 604 827 2606
natalie.haw@ubc.ca
https://sustain.ubc.ca/hub | http://climateemergency.ubc.ca/

The UBC Vancouver campus is situated within the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam).

 

Learn more about our vision for a just and sustainable world, and our 5-year plan to bring it to life. sustain.ubc.ca/hub

 

Hi everyone,

This week’s IRES Seminar is in Michael Smith Labs Theatre (102-2185 East Mall).  REMINDER: No food or drinks allowed in the Theatre.

 

January 26, 2023: IRES Faculty Seminar with Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Hamilton

Talk Title: Weathering

Time: 12:30pm to 1:20pm

Location: Michael Smith Labs Theatre (102-2185 East Mall)

This seminar is in-person only.

This seminar will not be recorded.

Talk summary:

This talk will define the feminist concept of “weathering” and describe how it can be used to guide research design and analysis in interdisciplinary environmental studies. We will illustrate how this concept works using practical examples from our own research as The Weathering Collective, and other initiatives in Canada (The FEELed Lab) and Australia (Community Weathering Station). People interested in climate change want us to speak about the rain, but we want to speak about social relations. Attentive to the logic of weathering, we can build a new language to speak about how meteorological weather intersects with anthropocentric politics and infrastructures in ways that insist that weather, and by extension climate change, are always more-than-meteorological. Weathering demands that research on climate change attend to the experiences and inheritances of bodies in all of their differences. As we are always weathering, how can we use this capacious concept to help shape research methods and questions? How might these questions illuminate different kinds of mitigation and adaptation measures as necessary for better weathering?

 

 

Dr. Astrida Neimanis (right), Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities, and Director of the FEELed Lab at UBC Okanagan
Dr. Jennifer Hamilton (left), Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at University of New England, founder of The Community Weathering Station

Bio:

Astrida Neimanis is Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities, and Director of the FEELed Lab at UBC Okanagan (Kelowna, Canada); Jennifer Mae Hamilton is Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at UNE (Armidale, Australia) and founder of CoWS (The Community Weathering Station). Since 2015,  Jennifer and Astrida have been been experimenting, researching, writing, and making together: as co-coordinators of COMPOSTING Feminisms and the Environmental Humanities; as co-convenors of Hacking the Anthropocene 2016-2018, and (with Tessa Zettel) as founding members of The Weathering Collective. Their most recent co-authored publication is “Feminist Infrastructures for Better Weathering” (Australian Feminist Studies, 2021).

 

 

See you on Thursday in the Michael Smith Labs Theatre!

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

Bonnie Leung

RES Program Support (she/her/hers)

Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES)

University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus | Musqueam Traditional Territory

Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory (AERL Building)

Room 429 – 2202 Main Mall | Vancouver, BC | V6T 1Z4 | Canada

 

Email: bonnie.leung@ubc.ca

Tel: 604-822-9249

The Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) will be offering a Graduate Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) on March 4, 5 & 11, 2023.

The Grad ISW is a 24-hour, fully participatory, and peer-based professional development workshop for graduate students that is beneficial to both new and experienced instructors.

Please note: You must attend all face-to-face sessions and complete all independent work for the complete duration of the workshop, (i.e. the entire 24-hour workshop).

Visit this page to apply for the waitlist for March 4, 5 & 11, 2023 ISW:  https://events.ctlt.ubc.ca/events/graduate-instructional-skills-workshop-march-4-5-11-2023-preliminary-application/

 

Application opens on January 23 at 9 am and closes on March 1, 2023 at 4:30 pm. By clicking this link, you are applying for the WAITLIST only and this DOES NOT register you for the workshop. Graduate ISWs at UBC are in high demand. To create an equitable registration process all graduate students who apply for an ISW will first be enrolled on a waitlist, from which participants are randomly selected. If a participant has applied for more than one ISW waitlist, their name will appear more frequently when generating the participant list, giving them a higher chance of being selected for an ISW. If you are accepted into the workshop, you will be contacted by our office to confirm your registration. For more information and a list of all upcoming sessions visit: http://ctlt.ubc.ca/gradisw

 

 

Workshop Eligibility:

 

A participant who wishes to take the Grad ISW is eligible if they are:

• a full-time or part-time registered graduate student at UBC during the academic term when the ISW is offered
• a graduate student at UBC who has completed degree requirements but has not yet convocated
• a joint degree graduate student who is enrolled at UBC and another institution
• a graduate student at UBC pursuing non-degree studies
• a visiting graduate student that is eligible to take courses

 

A participant who wishes to take the Grad ISW is not eligible if they are:

• not a graduate student at UBC
• a graduate student at UBC who has on-leave status
• a visiting graduate student that is not eligible to take courses

 

 

 

 

Elisa Herman
Event Coordinator
Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology
The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus
214-1961 East Mall  | Vancouver BC | V6T 1Z1 Canada
elisa.herman@ubc.ca | @UBC_CTLT

http://www.ctlt.ubc.ca

Land and Food System Scholar Series

 

Invited scholar: Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe

 

Hosted by:  Crystal Karakochuk, Human Nutrition

 

Title: Modeling host diet- gut microbe interactions in the ‘Robobut’ bioreactor model

 

Abstract: There is now abundant evidence that the microbial consortium associated with a host – its microbiome – is critically important to the health of the host.  The gut microbiome is the most diverse ecosystem in the human body and how we feed this ecosystem, through the diet that we consume, plays a major role in the shaping of the ecosystem in terms of its composition and function.  However, studying complex microbial ecosystems from the human gut is not a trivial exercise. In this talk, I will describe the development of the Robogut as a model system to allow study of dietary shifts and their effects on the colonic microbiome, showcasing my lab’s work on microbiomes associated with Type 1 diabetes, colorectal cancer, and hunter-gatherer populations, respectively.

 

Biography: Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe obtained her BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of London, and her PhD in Molecular Microbiology through an industrial partnership with Public Health England.   Emma started her faculty career at the University of Calgary in 2005, with a Fellow-to-Faculty transition award through CAG/AstraZeneca and CIHR, to study the normal microbes of the human gut.  In particular, she was among the few that focused on trying to culture these ‘unculturable’ microbes in order to better understand their biology.  To do this, she developed a model gut system to emulate the conditions of the human gut and allow communities of microbes to grow together, as they do naturally.  Emma moved her lab to the University of Guelph in late 2007, and has been a recipient of several Canadian Foundation for Innovation Awards that has allowed her to develop her specialist anaerobic fermentation laboratory further. This was boosted by the award of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Gut Microbiome Function and Host Interactions, where she focuses on ‘missing microbes’ from the industrialized microbiome . In 2013, Emma co-founded NuBiyota, a research spin-off company that aims to create therapeutic ecosystems as biologic drugs, on a commercial scale.  The research enterprise for this company is also based in Guelph.

 

Join in-person or via Zoom:

Date: January 26, 2023

Time: 10:00-11:00 AM PST

Location: In-person at MCML 258, or via Zoom

This presentation will be followed by a meet and greet from 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM.

 

In-person seating is limited (capacity of 38), please register here by Jan 23.