The School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) is delighted to announce this year’s recipients of the Nadeau Graduate Research Award, a grant established by the Robin E. Nadeau fund to support research and education in SNRE.  

SNRE graduate students can apply for the Nadeau grant to support research and educational activities in both basic and applied contexts such as attending national and international conferences to present research, traveling to accredited institutions to receive training on new research techniques, and conducting field work for data collection.  

Here are 2024’s Nadeau Award recipients: 

Yukti Taneja

Yukti Taneja is a second-year PhD student in Interdisciplinary Ecology at UF SNRE. Taneja’s major advisor is Dr. Luke Flory, a professor in the Department of Agronomy. She is an ecologist from India with a master’s in wildlife sciences. Her dissertation research explores how the success of invasive plant species is shaped by multiple biotic interactions, particularly the combined and shifting roles of mutualists and antagonists across space and time.  

With support from the Nadeau Award, Taneja will investigate the temporal dynamics of plant invasion in the Galápagos Islands, where she is developing a collaborative project with researchers at the Charles Darwin Foundation. Her project focuses on understanding the mechanisms influencing the observed decline of Cinchona pubescens, a historically dominant invasive tree species, by isolating the roles of various biotic partners, an opportunity provided through relatively simplified interaction webs of such oceanic island ecosystems.  

“My work seeks to move beyond traditional pairwise frameworks in invasion ecology,” Taneja explained.  

“I’m curious about how our understanding of invasion changes when we acknowledge that species interactions are fundamentally multiple, simultaneous, and often mediated through shared traits and resource currencies.” 

Samantha Howley

Sam Howley is a second-year PhD student in Interdisciplinary Ecology at UF SNRE. Howley’s major advisors are Dr. Matt Cohen, a professor in the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, and co-advisor Dr. Amanda Subalusky, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology. She received both her bachelor’s in environmental science and her master’s in interdisciplinary ecology from SNRE. Her dissertation research examines carbon fluxes in riparian wetlands in Kenya and the flatwoods of Florida.  

Sam plans to use the Nadeau Award to cover travel expenses for a four-week research stay in Kenya. She believes this award represents an invaluable opportunity to contribute meaningful, actionable science to the broader ecological community, both in Florida and East Africa. 

“This research is important because it helps land managers make educated decisions on how to manage their land,” Howley said.  

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