College of Integrative Sciences

The climate change Earth is experiencing today is similar to that during a period of rapid and intense global warming it experienced some 56 million years ago. Understanding the similarities can help scientists evaluate what is happening in today’s warming world, according to Ellen Thomas, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Integrative Sciences, Emerita. Key to that understanding is figuring out how much oxygen was dissolved in large swaths of the oceans during that period of rapid warming, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM, when average temperatures increased by 5-8o Celsius or 9-14o Fahrenheit in a few thousand years, Thomas…

On the surface, the annual poster session held in Exley Science Center looked like an average scientific poster presentation. A couple hundred students lined up side-by-side, standing anxiously next to their tripod-hoisted poster boards waiting for passersby to ask them about their colorful charts and graphs. For the attendees, it could be their chance to learn about something new. For each presenter, the poster was the culmination of their curiosities, a spotlight on all their hours spent tucked under the lab lights or sifting through ocean sediment samples. “I love coming together as a community on this day,” Seth Redfield,…

Two promising young scientists at Wesleyan, Aaron Berson ’24 and Jessica Luu ’24, were chosen for the distinguished Barry Goldwater Scholarship, given annually to hundreds of college sophomores and juniors across the nation pursuing research in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. “Because of their degree of involvement in research, many Wesleyan undergraduates are—if their career plans align with the award—great candidates for the Barry Goldwater Scholarship,” said Erica Kowsz, Assistant Director for Fellowships at the Fries Center for Global Studies. “A real advantage of this scholarship is that it gives students a chance to learn how to write a…

Keleki Logoh ’23 lived in Togo, located in West Africa, until she was seven years old. In 2021, she went back home for the first time since she was a little girl. “I was shocked by the state of the country,” Logoh said. Food scarcity was an issue since over 60 percent of the citizens experienced moderate to severe food insecurity. Imported vegetables were expensive. People had trouble balancing financial burdens with feeding their families. Just a few months later, Logoh was back at Wesleyan going down an internet rabbit hole of videos of different kinds of farming techniques. When…

Thanks to her discovery of a global warming event that occurred 56 million years ago, Ellen Thomas, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Integrated Sciences, Emerita, changed the way we think about climate change. Her research started with a serendipitous discovery of severe extinction of microscopic deep-sea organisms, foraminifera. Because of her prolific and impactful research, Thomas, along with her colleague James Zachos of the University of California, Santa Cruz, was given the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the climate change category. “Both laureates think that the destructive impact of the event should be a warning to us…

Almost every scientist has an origin story, the moment they knew a life of scientific inquiry and research was something they wanted. “All of the faculty have that story,” said Seth Redfield, professor of astronomy, at the annual poster session held at Exley Science Center on July 28. “Almost all of them involve an experience like this one.” About 200 students representing all of the University’s scientific disciplines shared the fruits of a summer spent doing research. The summer research program is hosted by the College of Integrative Sciences. Students and faculty milled around the lobby of Exley, talking to…

Haley Brumberger BA/MA ’21 captured an image through a microscope of tiny crustaceans called ostracods in sediments of a volcanic lake in Oregon during the 2019 program for Wesleyan Summer Research in the Sciences, which she participated in as a summer research fellow through the College of Integrative Sciences. The image first won the Summer Research in the Sciences Image Competition for 2019 before winning this year’s image competition for The Micropalaeontological Society (TMS). They announced her win on Twitter, as well as through the RedBubble merchandise they’re selling of the image. Brumberger, who majored in earth and environmental sciences…

At first glance, a viewer sees a single image of pink-tinted cubes, resembling a bacteria culture from high school biology. But upon closer examination, the viewer begins to see a series of other shapes—triangles to hexahedrons to tetahexahedraons (cubes with four-sided pyramids on each face). "If you stare at this image for a while, you can see that it's actually a series of five images in the top row, and five images on the bottom row, and each of these images show us nanoparticles that are made of gold and copper," said Brian Northrop, professor of chemistry. "It's intriguing, captivating,…

Scientists have already discovered more than 3,500 exoplanetary systems (planets orbiting around stars) in the universe, with the number continually expanding. By using Wesleyan's new 24-inch telescope, Kyle McGregor '24 is on the hunt for more, specifically systems involving two planets. To find them, he measures the light from stars over time, noting that the light will decrease when an exoplanet passes in front of a star, blocking the radiated light to Earth. "The measuring of this change in light, known as the 'transit method,' allows us to detect the presence of these distant worlds and to study their properties,"…

Ellen Thomas, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Integrative Sciences, is the co-author of five scientific papers. All are part of the output of international collaborations of which her Wesleyan-based research was a part, funded by the National Science Foundation over the last three years. “All the studies look at different aspects of the behavior of microscopic organisms in the oceans under past environmental stress, whether caused by the impact of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, or past episodes of global warming or cooling, and at the effect of different rates of environmental change on these life forms," she said.…

Ellen Thomas, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Integrative Sciences, Smith Curator of Paleontology of the Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History, and University Professor in the College of Integrative Sciences, is the recipient of the 2020 Joseph A. Cushman Award for Excellence in Foraminiferal Research. At Wesleyan, Thomas investigates oceanic benthic foraminifera (eukaryotic unicellular organisms) as proxies for the impact of changes in environment and climate on living organisms on various time scales. This fall, she's teaching the courses Research Frontiers in the Sciences and Mass Extinctions in the Oceans. Brian Huber, president of the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal…

Several faculty have recently authored or co-authored books, book chapters, and articles that appear in prestigious academic journals. BOOKS AND BOOK CHAPTERS Eric Charry, professor of music, is the author of A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s (Wesleyan University Press, 2020). Robert "Bo" Conn, professor of Spanish, is the author of Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas: Biography, Ideology, and the Public Sphere (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Anthony Ryan Hatch, associate professor of science in society, is the author of three book chapters: “The Artificial Pancreas in Cyborg Bodies,” published in The Oxford Handbook of…

New Research Suggests Ocean May Increase in Oxygen During Warming

Students Present Research Contributions at Annual Poster Session

Wesleyan Students Receive Goldwater Scholarship

Logoh ’23 to Start Up Aquaponics Farm in Togo

Thomas Receives Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Budding Scientists Share Their Research at Summer Poster Session

Microscopic Image Taken By Brumberger ’21 Wins Multiple Science Contests

Scientific Images of Nanoparticles, Colliding Stars, Learned Words Win Annual Contest

Students Study Exoplanets, Bird Viruses, Chinese Immigration, Bacteria during the Summer

Thomas Co-Authors 5 Studies on Oceanic Environmental Stress

Thomas Honored for Excellence in Foraminiferal Research

Faculty, Alumni, Students Publish Books, Journal Articles