Faculty mentors.  Twenty-six faculty affiliated with the Departments of Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology at Kansas State University are available to serve as mentors for students in the REU program at Konza Prairie Biological Station.  The pool of prospective mentors includes beginning investigators who are developing new research projects, and senior scientists with well-established programs.  All mentors have considerable experience supervising research projects by REU students and have directed study projects by undergraduate students working for research credit during the academic year.  In total, the faculty members below have advised more than 100 REU students supported by REU Site Grants, REU Supplemental Grants or the early University Research Program (URP).  The research interests of this group are broad and span a diverse range of ecological and evolutionary disciplines. The faculty are an unusually cohesive unit because of their common ties to the Ecological Genomics Institute, research at Konza Prairie and the associated LTER program.  REU students will be given access to the research equipment and project vehicles of the faculty members who serve as their mentors.  In the past, many faculty have also maintained an open door policy and have shared equipment with REU students working with other investigators.

The Application Form requires that applicants list three mentors that they would be interested in working with.  Please review the areas of research and websites below and select three possible mentors from the list below.  Please note that a few faculty may be unavailable each year because they are traveling for field work or are on sabbatical leave.

Ecosystem Science		Invertebrate Biology
John Blair	Ecosystem Ecology	Susan Brown	Developmental Biology of Flour Beetles (Tribolium)
Joe Craine	Function of Nutrient-Limited Ecosystems	Mike Herman	Ecological Genomics of Nematodes
Walter Dodds	Aquatic Ecology	Tony Joern	Grazing Ecology of Grasshoppers
Richard Jeannotte	Soil Ecology and Lipidomics	David Margolies	Arthropod Ecology and Behavioral Genetics
Loretta Johnson	Nutrient Dynamics	Jeremy Marshall	Evolutionary and Behavioral Ecology of Insects
Ari Jumpponen	Ecology of Fungi	Ted Morgan	Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics
Ruth Welti	Lipidomics: Studying Metabolites with Mass Spectrometry	Gregory Zolnerowich	Systematic Entomology
Plant Biology		Vertebrate Biology
Eduard Akhunov	Wheat Genomics	Keith Gido	Ecology of Fishes
Carolyn Ferguson	Plant Systematics	Eva Horne	Behavioral Ecology of Reptiles
Karen Garrett	Plant Disease Ecology	Tim Parker	Behavioral Ecology and Avian Vocalizations
Kendra McLauchlin	Environmental Geography	Craig Paukert	Fisheries Science
Jesse Nippert	Plant Ecophysiology	Brett Sandercock	Population and Behavioral Ecology of Birds
Mark Ungerer	Ecological Genomics of Plants	Samantha Wisely	Conservation Genetics of Mammals
Anna Whitfield	Plant Virology