UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Peter Kareiva, Lead Scientist For The Nature Conservancy, Will Be The Keynote Speaker At The Northeast Ecology & Evolution Conference March 18-20 On Penn State's University Park Campus. The Event Will Be Hosted By Students In Penn State’s Intercollege Graduate Degree Program In Ecology And The Biology Department.

Kareiva's presentation on Saturday, March 19, at the Days Inn from 8-9 p.m. will not be open to the public because of the facility's capacity restrictions. But he will give a public talk on Friday, March 18, from 2-3 p.m. in the Assembly Room at the Nittany Lion Inn, entitled "GMO'S and Non-Target Effects -- the Need for Evidence Based Risk Assessment."

With 249 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars registered from 55 universities and institutions, the conference will showcase the research of students from throughout the Northeast and Midwest regions in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. There will be 95 oral presentations on Saturday and Sunday in Thomas Building and The Life Sciences Building. There will be 82 poster presentations in Agricultural Sciences and Industries Building on Saturday. Topics for the oral and poster presentations over during the conference will include biogeochemistry, genome evolution, molecular ecology, animal behavior, population ecology, phylogenetics, and conservation and global climate change.

"The goal of the conference is to provide a professional-quality research conference where junior-level researchers can present their work to an audience of their peers," says conference volunteer Matt Ferrari, a Ph.D candidate in ecology. "This opportunity is made possible by generous contributions from the Penn State Institutes of the Environment, the College of Agricultural Sciences, the Eberly College of Science, the Huck Institute for the Life Sciences, the Graduate School, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, the Schreyer Honors College, and the Ecological Society of America Student Section."

The conference has been organized entirely by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the ecology program and the department of biology. There have been some 40 volunteers involved in conference organization and planning. Conference registration was open for undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows through February, but due to the overwhelming response, it is now closed.

Kareiva, who received his doctoral degree from Cornell University in 1981, has been on the faculty at Brown University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, Santa Clara University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has been a Fellow at Oxford University (in Mathematics) and a Guggenheim Fellow and has taught and conducted research in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. He is the author or editor of seven books and more than 100 scientific articles on topics concerning climate change, conservation, biotechnology, and fisheries.

In addition to a long academic career, he worked for NOAA Science Center Conservation Biology Division. In this role he was in charge of the research into conserving salmon along the coast of western North America. He has mentored more than 30 doctoral students or postdoctoral scientists, and they now hold positions in twenty different universities around the world, as well as several government agencies and non-profit organizations.

###

EDITORS: Contact Matt Ferrari at 814-238-8483 or by e-mail at mjf283@psu.edu.

Jeff Mulhollem Office 814-863-2719 FAX 814-863-9877