Arkansas State University biological sciences researchers Travis Marsico, associate professor of botany, and Brook Fluker, assistant professor of aquatic ecology.
The National Science Foundation is giving $5.48 million to support research projects led by a pair of biological sciences faculty members at Arkansas State University.
Travis Marsico, an associate professor of botany, and Brook Fluker, assistant professor of aquatic ecology, will lead the projects, which evolved from the Delta Research Consortium of universities and colleges that formed last year.
The Delta Research Consortium is an initiative of the Delta Regional Authority.
Marsico will lead the “Upper Delta Region Biodiversity Scholarship Program.” The program will mentor and support 120 students during the five-year term of the grant. Scholarships to study biodiversity science and natural history collections management will be distributed between A-State, Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, and Murray State University in Kentucky.
Marsico will be principal investigator. The project has a total budget of $4.9 million.
Fluker will lead the Arkansas Center for Biodiversity Collections. The project includes new museum-quality shelving, storage cabinets and a database system that will provide improved access for students and researchers.
Fluker’s grant is for $478,000 over a three-year period. He is a co-principal investigator on Marsico’s project.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity to educate graduate and undergraduate students in this field of study at A-State, making us a leader in our region,” Marsico said in a news release. “We are now able to take 70 years of collections data and specimens, house them effectively, curate them appropriately, and make them widely available digitally to the scientific research community.
“The type of large-scale research that will result is only possible with accessible and digitized specimen data.”
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