Dr. Rob Dunn, center, with Dr. David
Ragsdale
(left) and Amanda Davila-Flores
Dr. Rob Dunn Named Perry Adkisson Distinguished Seminar Speaker
The Department of Entomology and the Entomology Graduate Student Organization of Texas A&M University named Dr. Rob Dunn as the newest recipient of the Perry Adkisson Seminar Speaker Award.
Dunn has been with North Carolina State University since 2005, where he is an assistant professor of ecology in the Department of Biology. His research mixes field experiments with large-scale observational studies of the distribution of species, traits and interactions.
Dunn has written several essays that have been published in various places such as National Geographic, Natural History, The Smithsonian Online and BBC Wildlife, and has a book published called Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys.
Dunn received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut and his Bachelors of Science in Biology at Kalamazoo College. After receiving his Ph.D. at Connecticut, he became a Fulbright Fellow at Curtin University in Australia and also worked as a postdoctorate fellow at the University of Tennessee.
Graduate student Amanda Davila-Flores nominated Dunn due to his great research and teaching, as well as his outstanding views of science in the fields of biology and entomology.
"When I was his student there was a never a day when he did not come in excited and enthusiastic about teaching," she said. "He motivated us to want to learn and answer our own questions."
Given every fall, the Perry Adkisson Distinguished Seminar Speaker Award recognizes outstanding researchers in the field of entomology and gives graduate students and the community the opportunity to hear the latest research from leading scientists.
The award is named for Dr. Perry Adkisson, former head of the Department and of the Texas A&M University Chancellor. During his career, Adkisson was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the first ever recipient of all three of the world’s major prizes in agriculture, the Alexander von Humboldt Award, the Wolf Prize, and the World Food Prize. Along with Dr. Ray Smith, he developed what is now known as IPM or Integrated Pest Management.
For more information about the award, visit the Perry Adkisson Distinguished Seminar Speaker Award page on the Entomology Graduate Student Organization's website at http://egso.tamu.edu/adkissonaward/index.cfm