FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Stan Wullschleger, a scientist with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named the recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Alumnus Award for the Department of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

Wullschleger is in ORNL's Energy and Environmental Sciences Directorate and Climate Change Science Institute. He is currently the national project director for the U.S. Department of Energy's Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Arctic, a research initiative to improve climate models by addressing physical, chemical and biological behavior of permafrost-rich terrestrial ecosystems on the North Slope of Alaska.

Wullschleger earned his doctorate in crop physiology from UA in 1990 after earning bachelor's and master's degrees in forest biology from Colorado State University. He was presented the award at a banquet on March 8.

The NGEE-Arctic project includes a team of more than 140 scientists working on integrated, model-inspired studies in geophysics, hydrology, biogeochemistry, vegetation dynamics and multi-scale numerical modeling. The goal is to accelerate the incorporation of new information from the field and lab studies into climate models.

Wullschleger has spent more than 25 years pursuing global scientific issues, and has combined training in plant physiology with interdisciplinary approaches. He has researched the sustainable use of herbaceous and woody bioenergy crops as a renewable source of transportation fuel, participated in molecular investigations of model and non-model organisms, and measured the physiological mechanisms by which plants and ecosystems respond to global environmental change.

Since joining ORNL in 1990 as an Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, Wullschleger has focused on climate change, the genetic basis for bioenergy crops, carbon-water cycles and molecular ecology.

ORNL, located near Knoxville, Tennessee, is the largest U.S. Department of Energy science and energy laboratory.  

Wullschleger was a scientist with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service before completing his doctorate. Married to Denise with two children and three grandchildren, he teaches an inner city after-school science program in Knoxville.

About the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences: Bumpers College provides life-changing opportunities to position and prepare graduates who will be leaders in the businesses associated with foods, family, the environment, agriculture, sustainability and human quality of life; and who will be first-choice candidates of employers looking for leaders, innovators, policy makers and entrepreneurs. The college is named for Dale Bumpers, former Arkansas governor and longtime U.S. senator who made the state prominent in national and international agriculture.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.