New ORAU award contributes to Jacob Suissa’s research on the evolution of ferns.
Assistant Professor Jacob Suissa, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), will receive a Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). This prestigious $5,000 research award, with a matching amount from the college, recognizes the potential of young scientists through a rigorous peer-review evaluation and selection process that involves outstanding scientists from across the nation.
“It is so exciting that they recognized Jacob’s excellence with this award this year,” said Professor Jennifer Schweitzer, EEB department head. “The Powe Award requires matching from the college, and EEB and will provide funds for Jacob to expand his scholarship. More importantly, the award acknowledges his potential as an outstanding faculty member.”
Suissa’s proposal for the award explores one of the most important questions in evolutionary biology: how development affects the origin of new form and function.
“I will use the university’s newly acquired X-ray microscope, housed in the Advanced Microscopy Imaging Core, with machine-learning image segmentation to examine the evolution of fern vasculature—the set of tubes that move water and nutrients through their bodies,” said Suissa.
This research has practical importance in two areas.
“First, plants face existential challenges when their vascular system is disrupted. Understanding how vasculature can evolve provides information on anthropocentric crop improvement and plant survival to climate change,” said Suissa. “Second, and more broadly, examining how development influences the origin of novel form helps generate predictive models of evolution, leading to a deeper understanding of how organisms can evolve and the evolutionary process itself.”
Suissa is a classically trained botanist and evolutionary biologist who studies plant evolution through deep time and under global change. He is also the Pteridophyte (Fern) Collection Curator for the UT Herbarium. Outside of his UT roles, he runs the educational non-profit Let’s Botanize with the goal of combating the climate and biodiversity crises by spreading a knowledge of, and appreciation for, plants.
Eligibility for the Powe Awards is open to full-time assistant professors at ORAU member institutions, within two years of their tenure track appointment at the time of application, given as part of ORAU’s mission to advance scientific and technical workforce development while fostering community health and sustainability.
In supporting Suissa’s work, the award also contributes to the College of Arts and Science’s mission of pursuing groundbreaking research and creative activities across disciplines.
by Randall Brown