NSF Grant to Fund Visit to Kenya

Steve Stephenson, a research professor in the University of Arkansas department of biological sciences, and Adam Rollins, an assistant professor of biology at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, have been awarded a grant of $16,687 from the National Science Foundation.

Rollins is one of Stephenson's former graduate students and received his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas in 2008. The grant will allow Stephenson and Rollins to travel to Kenya during 2011, when they will visit the Center for Biodiversity housed at the National Museums of Kenya, the University of Nairobi and the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

The primary purpose of the visit, which will last for approximately two weeks, is to meet with Dr. George Ndiritu of the Center for Biodiversity in Nairobi in order to develop plans for future collaborative research centered around mycetozoans (slime molds) in grassland ecosystems, to collect a preliminary set of samples from a study area (the Maasai Mara National Reserve) in Kenya to generate some baseline data on the system to be studied, and to present several seminars and a workshop on mycetozoans to Kenyan university students and museum professionals. Ndiritu also received his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas, where Fred Spiegel, chair of the department of biological sciences, served as his major professor.