Melissa visited the CU Denver campus to work on a NSF proposal with Drs. Buma and Scheller. While she was visiting, she gave a seminar and met with graduate students to talk about her career journey. And on Saturday, we went for a short hike in the Boulder area. Gorgeous!!
New grant to work in Siberia
Our lab is excited to share that we were just awarded $870,000 from NSF to study the boreal forests of Siberia with the US Forest Service, Oak Ridge National Lab and U of Tennessee at Knoxville. We are excited to get started in October 2019 and will be hiring two post-docs on the project this winter.
Lab trip to Alaska
Melissa and Shelby spend a few days in beautiful Alaska filming videos for our Reburns project.
https://www.melissalucash.com/outreach/2019/8/2/filming-videos-for-our-reburns-alaska-project
Symposium on Forest Management at World Congress of IALE in Italy
Dr. Lucash organized a symposium with Drs. Scheller (NCSU) and Betts (OSU) on the synergies between climate and management at the World Congress of the International Association of Landscape Ecology in Milano, Italy. Beautiful place, wonderful colleagues and delicious food.
Outreach with middle school STEM club
Melissa conducted a hands-on activity about wildfire with an after-school STEM club for middle school girls in Hillsboro, OR. Girls designed their own forests to burn at different severities and then tested them. Lots of fun and we didn’t set off the smoke alarm. Success!
Melissa and Shelby are heading to CO to present at IALE!
A Glimpse into the Future: Using Spatial Modeling and Virtual Reality to Visualize Forests under Climate Change . Melissa Lucash, Jiawei Huang, Alexander Klippel,Robert M. Scheller, Robert Nicholas, Kelsey L. Ruckert, Erica A.H. Smithwick,
Using habitat suitability modeling to evaluate potential moose habitat and patterns of wildfire in interior Alaska. Shelby Weiss and Melissa Lucash
The Predictable, and not so Predictable, Spatial Distribution of Short Interval Fires Across the US West. Brian Buma, Melissa Lucash, Katherine Hayes and Shelby Weiss
Dr. Lucash's essay on the challenges of re-entering academia after being a stay-at-home mother
Melissa Lucash, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA
Follow Melissa on Twitter
Being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) for five years has left an indelible mark on my career. When I got pregnant during the fourth year of my PhD, my husband and I played “Who gets the best job first?” I lost and we moved from Syracuse, NY to Portland, OR. As a pregnant woman alone in a new city, I worked on my dissertation each day at the grocery store, befriending the local retired men’s group. I defended my dissertation when my daughter was nine months old. As she grew, I was a SAHM by day, but two nights a week I pretended I was a scientist again and worked on my dissertation publications. My friends thought I was crazy to spend my precious free time working on papers. But I knew I didn’t want to be a SAHM forever and needed to keep publishing. Even after my second daughter was born, I continued to write each night at the glacial pace of an exhausted mother who slept in two-hour increments every night.
Read my full essay here:
https://theearlypages.blogspot.com/2019/03/holey-science-gaps-in-research-career.html#Melissa
Paul Pettus has joined our lab
Paul has officially joined our lab as of 2/1/18 and will be working on our DoD grant with NC State University and the New England Conservancy. He will be leading the model simulation work that will improve our understanding of how climate change will affect one of the largest tracts of longleaf pine stands remaining in the U.S. His work will explore different forest harvest and prescribed burning treatments to ensure the long-term viability of lthe endangered red-Cockaded woodpecker, which thrives in longleaf stands on Fort Bragg.
We are happy to have him join our lab!
New member of our lab!
Welcome to Paul Pettus who will be joining our lab on Feb 1, 2018 to work on our DoD grant. We look forward to having him bring his GIS expertise and his adorable pooch to our lab.
Our NSF grant is featured in Orion Magazine
Our NSF CNH grant (affectionately called ViFF, Visualizing Indigenous Forest Futures) was featured in Orion magazine this month. Read quotes by the PI Erica Smithwick, Co-PI Chris Caldwell, and many others from the Menominee.
