Conference to feature Forestry and Environmental Studies students’ doctoral research

Tropical cyclones cause billions of dollars in economic damages each year, and these losses are expected to rise as the global population increases and the atmosphere heats up over the coming century.

So when Laura Bakkensen, a doctoral student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (FE&S), heard a presentation on the economic damages, as well as human suffering, associated with cyclones, she says she “jumped at the chance to get involved.”

On Friday, Oct. 7, she will discuss her work on the economics of tropical cyclones under climate change as part of the 28th annual Doctoral Student Research Conference in Kroon Hall, 195 Prospect St. Fourteen other doctoral students, who are in various stages of their studies, will join Bakkensen in talking about developments in their research.

Bakkensen says she chose the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies because of the interdisciplinary nature of the program, which, she notes, is critical for environmental studies. “The F&ES doctoral program is flexible, personal and individual, yet it still offers all the rigor and training of an economics or natural resources economics department,” she says.

“The scholarship of our doctoral students is the reason why the National Research Council gave our program a top rating,” says F&ES dean Peter Crane. “Their concern for people and the planet is what we’re all about at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.” He notes that F&ES doctoral program currently has 75 students, 28 of whom are from 14 countries.

The Doctoral Student Research Conference begins at 9 a.m. Tracy Langkilde, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State, will give the keynote address, “Changes in Selective Pressure Across Lifetimes: Mediate Tradeoffs in Survival Strategies,” looking at her work on invasive species. Langkilde received the Mercer Award last month from the Ecological Society of America for her work on the impact of invasive fire ants on native lizards - research conducted while she was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale. Billions of dollars are spent each year on the management of invasive species in the United States alone, and her research focuses on ways to reduce that cost while maintaining healthy ecological habitats.

A complete conference schedule can be found at http://environment.yale.edu/event/30828. For more information, contact the conference’s co-organizer, Martin Bouda, at martin.bouda@yale.edu.