The College of Charleston is a nationwide leader in producing Fulbright Scholars. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the College tied for second among schools that offer master’s degrees, boasting three Fulbright scholars for the 2015-2016 academic year. (This includes geology professor Scott Harris, who’s completing research at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; studio art professor Steven Johnson at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath College of Fine Arts in Bangalore, India; and marine biology professor David Owens at Mawlamyine University in Myanmar.)
Read more about past Fulbright Scholars at the College.
And for the next academic year, the College is looking to repeat its Fulbright success, already able to announce that biology professor Andy Shedlock will be working as a Fulbright Scholar in Japan.
Shedlock, an expert in genomics, plans to spend nine months conducting laboratory work and field investigations from within two top Japanese research institutions: The National Institute for Statistical Mathematics and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
“We will use supercomputers to analyze a large body of genome sequence data I have produced for Atlantic sea turtles to model population structure, migration, and the predicted shifts in ecological dynamics linked to climate change,” says Shedlock. “Based on these intensive computational efforts we will specifically apply results to problems of pollution, habitat loss, illegal poaching, and invasive geopolitical activities taking place in the waters of the East and South China Seas surrounding Yakushima Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the remote Ryuku Archipelago of southern Japan that contain highly restrictive nesting habitats for a large fraction of threatened Pacific sea turtles.”
This research will also benefit from the collaborative spirit fostered by the Fulbright Foundation, says Shedlock. He looks forward to working with Asian colleagues and students and learning from other cultural perspectives of environmental stewardship.
Read more about Shedlock’s mapping of the genome of the green anole lizard, as published in Nature, and watch the video below to learn about genomics research at the College:
And to learn more about past Fulbright winners at the College, visit the Graduate School’s website at the College fo Charleston.
