Goetz Instrument Support Awards Announced

Innovative research projects based on spectroscopy and remote sensing have been recognized by the Alexander Goetz Instrument Support Program awards for 2014.

The awards program, now in its eighth year and supported by PANalytical Boulder (formerly ASD Inc.), acknowledges students who are using remote sensing or spectroscopy to carry out creative research. This year’s twelve winners are conducting their work in countries such as the US, Belize, Greenland, Ireland, Italy and Bulgaria; they were chosen based on technical and geographic diversity.

The students will use PANalytical advanced spectroscopy instruments in their research projects, including the FieldSpec 4 spectroradiometer, the LabSpec 4 laboratory instrument or the HandHeld 2 portable spectroradiometer.

Along with use of these instruments, the company gives each award recipient up to $500 in funding toward publication charges for papers published by an approved journal, or for costs associated with an oral or poster presentation at a relevant scientific conference.

The 2014 recipients and research projects are as follows:

Christina Bisulca, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Arizona — New Applications of VIS-NIR spectroscopy in Archaeological Science

Tanya E. Catignani, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science at George Mason University — Remote Sensing and Soil Spectroscopy of Ancient Mayan Wetland Agriculture in Northern Belize

Katie A. Corcoran, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee — Field Spectroscopy for Characterizing Human Grave Signatures

Alexander Dountchev, Ph.D. candidate, University of Forestry in Bulgaria — Monitoring of Coniferous Vegetation Stress Using Field Spectrometry, Multispectral and Hyperspectral Satellite Data

Kyle Earnshaw, Ph.D. candidate, Forestry and Natural Resources Department of Purdue University — Plasticity of Acacia koa Gray: Effect of Light Quality on Germination, Growth Rates and Morphology

Noel Flannery, M.Eng. candidate, Department of Mechanical, Aeronautical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Limerick, Ireland — LED Curing for Polymerisation of Contact Lenses-Fifth Generation Design

Ulyana Horodyskyj, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder — Quantifying Glacial Albedo for Correlation with MODIS Satellite Measurements — Mt. Everest and Lhotse, Himalaya

Gary T. LaVanchy, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Denver — Using Spectroscopy to Assist in the Estimation of Groundwater Recharge

Emily Norton, Ph.D. candidate, School of Applied Sciences at Bournemouth University, England — Field Reflectance Spectroscopy for the Detection of Clandestine Mass Graves in Temperate Environments

Giovanni Rallo, postdoctoral fellowship, Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences at Università di Palermo, Italy — Estimation of Water Potential Components and Pressure-Volume Curve Parameters on Intact Olive Vegetative Organs

John A. Servello, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Biological Sciences at the University of North Texas — Quantification of Collagen Content in Cortical Bone as an Indicator of Postmortem Interval: A Novel Technique Using Spectrometry

Carolyn Stwertka, Ph.D. candidate, Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College — On a Spatially and Temporally Varied Scale, Is Snowgrain Size or Black Carbon the Dominant Mechanism of Reduction in Albedo on the Greenland Ice Sheet?

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