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Biology PhD to Zurich on NSF Grant
Ivy in lab
Doctoral Candidate Traci Ivy
Traci Ivy, doctoral candidate in Biological Sciences, has been awarded a $121,227 International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Ivy will take the 22-month award to the University of Zurich’s Museum of Zoology starting in January 2006. “This is an achievement of great significance for the Department, College, and ISU, presenting an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the quality and high level of excellence of the research programs in Biological Sciences,” explained Tak Cheung, Chair of Biological Sciences. “We want to congratulate Traci on her success.”

 

 

In the past, Ivy was awarded close to $10,000 to fund her dissertation research with her director, Professor Scott Sakaluk. This Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) supports Ivy’s project, Polyandry in Crickets: Disentangling the Genetic Benefits, which investigates the evolution of female multiple mating in the decorated cricket, Gryllodes sigillatus. The grant is one of only two NSF DDIG awards earned by a Ph.D. student at Illinois State in the last 20 years.

Gryllodes mating
Gryllodes mating

Ivy earned her bachelor’s degree in Ecology, Ethnology, and Evolution at the University of Illinois and her master’s in Biological Sciences at ISU. Her doctoral work with Sakaluk has focused on why female crickets mate as frequently as they do with multiple partners, resulting in a higher quality of offspring, and her findings have been published in such journals as Behavioral Ecology and Behaviour. She will deliver the Mockford Fellow Department of Biological Sciences Seminar on May 5 at 4:00 p.m. in Moulton Hall 214.

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