Deland Award Recipients
Established in 1992 through the generous bequest of F. Stanton Deland, Jr., Harvard ’36, the Deland Award for Student Research supports research by graduate and advanced undergraduate students investigating the comparative biology of woody plants.
2012
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Laura Lagomarsino is a PhD student in the Davis Lab in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. She is studying the evolution of secondary woodiness in the Lobelioideae, a primarily temperate herbaceous group of plants. The Deland Award will enable Laura to travel to Peru to collect plant specimens for the Herbarium and for her studies of wood anatomy. |
2011
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Emily Scherbatskoy earned her bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She worked in the Friedman Lab with Julien Bachelier. In an effort to shed light on the evolution of female gametophyte development, her research focused on the comparative morphology of female gametophytes in diverse conifers. |
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Juan Losada is a PhD candidate with Professor Maria Herrero in the Pomology Department of the Aula Dei Experimental Station–CSIC, Spain. His graduate work has focused on the reproductive biology of apples (Malus spp.). Juan spent the summer working at the Weld Hill Research Building to expand his studies to include species in the Arboretum’s Magnolia and Stewartia collections. |
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Mariana Oliveira e Castro is working on her master’s thesis in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Coimbra in Portugal under the supervision of João Carlos Mano Castro Loureiro. In collaboration with John and Sally Perkins of the American Rhododendron Society, Mariana will determine the ploidy level (number of chromosome pairs) of 50 specimens of Rhododendron calendulaceum held in the Arboretum’s living collection. |
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A PhD candidate working with Dr. Lucy Hutyra at Boston University, Preeti Rao aims to understand how urbanization affects ecosystems. By comparing two plots in the Arboretum’s Bussey Brook Meadow with plots at the Harvard Forest and other areas in between, she hopes to quantify the effects of urbanization on nitrogen and carbon dynamics. Her project is a collaboration with Adrien Finzi of Boston University and Arboretum Senior Research Scientist Peter Del Tredici. |
