This week we are fortunate to have Mallory Ladd and Ziming Yang join us for this trip to Barrow as new team members. Mallory is starting her PhD as a student with the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education (http://bredesencenter.utk.edu/index.php). This program unites complementary resources at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Mallory is working with both Bob Hettich and Rich Norby to assess forms of organic nitrogen in permafrost. She will be applying various analytical techniques to examine nitrogenous compounds in soil and competition for that nitrogen between plants and microbes. Ziming joined the project as a postdoctoral research associate through ORNL’s Postdoctoral Program (http://www.ornl.gov/connect-with-ornl/for-academia/postdoctoral-programORNL) after a successful PhD program at Arizona State University. While at ASU Ziming obtained his PhD degree in organic chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Ziming is working with Baohua Gu and will examine the geochemical controls on methane flux from thawing permafrost. He will have both a field and a laboratory component to his research, as will Mallory. It is hoped that the work of both Mallory and Ziming will allow us to better understand and integrate novel aspects of carbon adn nitrogen biogeochemistry into models.
I will focus on Mallory's and Ziming's specific research later in the week and what they are individually doing while in Barrow while working on the NGEE Arctic project.
