ALASKA: New PI and Project Director of Alaska NSF EPSCoR Fire & Ice
Dr. Brenda Konar is the new Principal Investigator and Project Director of Alaska NSF EPSCoR Fire & Ice.
Konar has been involved with the Fire & Ice project since the beginning, as a co-PI and as co-lead of the Coastal Margins component. Within the component, her principal role has been coordinating and leading our intertidal research in Kachemak Bay.
Said Konar, “I’m stepping into the position at an important time, right at the midway point of our five-year project. A lot of the work we’ve done in the last couple of years is starting to pay off in the form of individual discoveries, datasets, and publications. The challenge now is to expand on our progress to reach larger conclusions about changes to Alaska’s boreal fires and coastal margins, ones that utilize and synthesize the many different kinds of data we’re generating. I’m also excited to work on our sustainability plan, so the progress we make in Fire & Ice will continue to benefit Alaska into the future.”
Konar attributes the success of Alaska NSF EPSCoR to former Director Pips Veazey’s strong leadership. “Pips had a long and successful run at Alaska EPSCoR, and we’re all deeply indebted to her for the current solid state of the program. But she didn’t do it alone: part of the secret to her success was building talented and capable Management and Leadership teams. With these folks to help shoulder the load, I have no worries about us continuing our success.”
Read the complete Letter from the Principal Investigator
Brenda Konar is currently a Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and just recently stepped down as CFOS’s Associate Dean of Research and as Director of the Institute of Marine Science and the Coastal Marine Institute. Konar has a PhD in Biology from the University of California-Santa Cruz, and has worked at UAF in various faculty capacities since 1999. Her research interests include intertidal and nearshore ecology, in particular processes that regulate seaweed and invertebrate communities. She also teaches various courses, including scientific diving, which is a personal passion of hers.