Wetherington Invited to Present Poster at LR Meeting

Rachel Wetherington was recently invited to present a poster at the National Association of Social Workers Arkansas Chapter Annual Conference. The meeting will be held in Little Rock from April 3 to 5, 2013. Earlier, Rachel had presented the poster on March 6, 2013 at an NASW Lobby Day in Little Rock as a part of a policy poster competition. NASW-AR board members invited Rachel to present the poster at the annual conference as a part of their student poster session on April 4th.

The topic of the poster is human trafficking. It seeks to raise awareness on the issue and urges Arkansas lawmakers and the public to take action as a state to end human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Before 2013, Arkansas had minimal legislation concerning this issue, but recently a bill has been signed into law and many others are in the stages of becoming law. The conference will allow Rachel to further raise awareness on human trafficking for social workers because they will have the responsibility of helping victims of human trafficking as the new laws are passed.

Shakya wins Smithsonian REU

Subir Shakya was recently selected to be a participant in the Smithsonian Natural History Research Experience program in Washington D.C. This 10-week internship offers a $5500 stipend and involves research in the field of vertebrate zoology. Subir will be a part of a research team supervised by two post-doctoral members of the Braum lab who are involved in the project. The title of the project is "Origin of the Tepui Highland Avifauna: a Comparative Phylogeographic Approach."

Subir will be responsible for testing a number of competing hypotheses that have been proposed to explain Pantepui avifauna endemism in various contexts by reconstructing data generated using next generation DNA sequencing. The post-doctoral mentors will be responsible for training and supervising Subir in all aspects of research. At the conclusion of the internship, Subir will likely be given authorship for the research, possibly as a first author.