Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) will use a Department of Education fellowship grant to train the next generation of researchers and educators in molecular biology, cell biology, and microbiology.

The Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) program provides fellowships to assist U.S. citizens pursuing doctoral degrees in fields deemed “areas of national need.” Over the next three years, WPI will receive nearly $900,000 in GAANN funding, which, when combined with a university match, will fund eight doctoral students in the Department of Biology and Biotechnology—two existing doctoral students and six new students. The program will represent a total investment of around $1.2 million. 

The future of chimpanzees depends on smart conservation strategies and that requires data, lots of data. Ecologist Adrienne Chitayat conducted research on chimpanzees in Tanzania and is the first to systematically survey the population density in the entirety of Mahale Mountains National Park. In her dissertation, she provides a detailed baseline of the density of chimpanzees in the park, which is part of the Greater Mahale Ecosystem. Chitayat also developed a new, deep learning-based acoustic detector that can identify chimpanzee sounds. This technology allows chimpanzee populations to be monitored more efficiently and human-related threats to be more easily anticipated. Chitayat will defend her PhD on Thursday, 7 November, at the University of Amsterdam.

What was long suspected has now been confirmed by Danish and international researchers. The European hedgehog has now been categorised as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. A number of European countries have seen a more than 30 per cent decline in hedgehog numbers during the past 10 years.

Since wolves returned to Germany 20 years ago, they have spread quickly in many parts of the country. The rapid increase in the number of wolves was due to high survival and reproduction rates in areas with favourable environmental conditions. This is the result of an analysis carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in collaboration with the LUPUS Institute, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), and the Senckenberg Center for Wildlife Genetics. The probability of survival for wolves during the period analysed was higher than anywhere else in the world. However, the expansion phase will end as soon as the carrying capacity of suitable German landscapes are reached ­– at which point survival rates can be expected to fall, according to the scientific team in a new paper in the scientific journal “Wildlife Biology”.