Biology News and Features
Cicadas: Dr. Randy Hunt explores the science behind the Brood X buzz
June 3, 2021
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)–Buzzy, squirty and occasionally crunchy underfoot–the periodical cicadas of Brood X have begun to emerge in what will be Biblical bazillions for their once-every-seventeen-years frolic of mating, egg-laying and hatching. Like the bugs themselves, human reactions to them are all over the map, ranging from “Cool!” to “Gross!” to “SHUT ...
IU Southeast biology students to participate in SEA PHAGES program
December 7, 2020
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)–IU Southeast biology students will now benefit from membership in a national research community. That community is called SEA-PHAGES, which is short for Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science. It is jointly administered by a research team at the University of Pittsburgh and the Howard Hughes Medical ...
Sustainability student Kaycee Ranney helps solve Florida mystery
October 7, 2020
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)–A tuft of fur. A wooden hand-rail, clawed and splintered. A request for help in identifying a mysterious predator. Sounds like a reboot of “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” but in fact these are the pieces of a real-life puzzle solved by Kaycee Ranney, a senior from Louisville majoring in ...
Jeannine Barr ’20 awarded certificate of special achievement by Botanical Society of America
May 12, 2020
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)–Jeannine Barr, a graduating senior from Lanesville, Indiana majoring in biology with minors in plant science and chemistry, has received a Young Botanist Award, Certificate of Special Achievement from the Botanical Society of America (BSA). Barr is one of 16 students nationally and the first from IU Southeast to receive ...
Omar Attum wins Fulbright Specialist Award
March 6, 2020
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)–Omar Attum, associate professor of biology, has won a Fulbright Specialist Award from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Over two weeks in the summer of 2020, Attum will complete a project at the Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan that aims to exchange knowledge ...
Faculty Innovator: Kent Edmonds
December 6, 2019
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)—It’s urinalysis day in the Physiology 215 Lab, taught by Professor of Biology Dr. Kent Edmonds. Over the course of the two-hour lab, students consume specified amounts of water, saline and bicarbonate solutions, and then, every half hour, collect their own personal urine specimen in the nearby restroom. They subject ...
Faculty Innovator: Omar Attum
October 8, 2019
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)–Dune 45 in Swakopumund, Namibia is a towering lump of sand. The small group of IU Southeast students and instructors have been hiking for nearly an hour in near darkness to scale the summit before dawn, and experience the magic of a desert sunrise. It comes on slowly but irrevocably, ...
Faculty Innovator: David Treves
March 5, 2019
By Steven Krolak (NEW ALBANY, Ind.)—A life-size bronze statue of a woolly mammoth stands in front of the Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. Inside the Museum, in a room colloquially known as Elephant Hall, mammoth and mastodon skeletons tower over visitors, giving a sense of the size and strength of the large mammals that ...
