University Distinguished Professor Andrew Townsend Peterson earns three new awards

Two of the grants are sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and one by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

Collaborative Research: Digitization and Enrichment of U.S. Herbarium Data from Tropical Africa to Enable Urgent Quantitative Conservation Assessments is an NSF grant. Peterson, University Distinguished Professor with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Ornithology at the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas, will direct this project. The grant coordinates a broad network of U.S. herbaria in an effort to capture the data associated with all African herbarium sheets held in U.S. herbaria. The total anticipated award amount is more than $425,000.

The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks grant will support the Bunker Resurvey Project: A Century of Environmental Change in Kansas.  The purpose of this project is to resurvey the original collections and inventories that were done by KU Biodiversity Institute personnel led by Charles Dean Bunker in the 1910s and 1920s, at sites across the state of Kansas. The total anticipated award amount is more than $8,000.

Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Preparedness (PIPP) is an NSF grant with partners at the University of Oklahoma, U.S. Geological Survey, and others.  PIPP Phase 1: International Center for Avian Influenza Pandemic Prediction and Prevention, assembles a multi-institutional team to explore the appropriate pathways for establishing an International Center for Avian Influenza Pandemic Prediction and Prevention (ICAIP3). The mission of the center is to tackle the grand challenges in global health with a focus on avian-influenza pandemic prediction and prevention. The broader impacts of this project include increased international partnerships between researchers, stakeholders, and decision makers; development of STEM workforce for international and convergent research and diverse career paths; increased public scientific literacy and public engagement; and increased capacity for avian influenza pandemic prediction and prevention. The total anticipated award amount is roughly $1 million.