Recent UAF grad wins German scientific prize

Submitted by Doreen Fitzgerald
Phone: 474-5042
12/15/04

University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate Martin Wilmking has received the prestigious Sofja Kovalevskaja award for outstanding young researchers. The award, one of the most highly-endowed German scientific prizes, is granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research. The 2004 recipients will receive funding of up to 1.2 million euros during the period 2004 to 2007. This year’s prize winners represent the United States, Belgium, China, Germany, Italy, and Poland.

At UAF Wilmking earned an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in forest ecology in 2003. His research committee was directed by professor Glenn Juday of the forest sciences department in the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences.

"The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has made a really good selection,"? said Juday. "During his time in Alaska, Martin was always a great explorer, always anxious to push on into the unknown and never satisfied with the obvious. He did his Alaska project in a cooperative framework, and I never met anyone who wasn’t really glad to be working with him. It’s always a pleasure to mentor people like that."? Wilmking was born in Germany in 1972 and studied at Potsdam University before attending UAF. He currently holds a fellowship at Columbia University that is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Postdoctoral Program in Climate and Global Change.

The intent of the Kovalevskaja award is to internationalize German research while supporting scientists and scholars in the early stages of their careers. It enables young scientists to conduct research they choose, finance their own work groups at German research institutions, and cover their living expenses. Although two of the winners were originally from Germany, all have been working outside of that country for at least five years. Along with Wilmking, ten others received the award for projects covering such diverse subjects as particle physics, astrophysics, biochemistry, and Egyptology.

Wilmking’s proposal, the only one in ecology, concerns carbon exchange and balance in the peat lands of northern Europe and Siberia and their role in the global climate system and climate change. Although northern peat lands cover a large region of the earth, they have been investigated far less than forests. The major questions are how climate warming is affecting the large amounts of carbon bound in the peat lands and how these areas are interacting with the atmosphere. Wilmking previously has investigated regional sequences of global processes in arctic Alaska, Russia, and Mongolia. His project will both strengthen existing collaboration and create new, supra-regional cooperation and contacts. While in Germany, Wilmking will be hosted by the Institute of Botany at Greifswald University.

The Berlin press conference announcing the awards was attended by the President of the Foundation, Wolfgang Frí1ò4hwald, and Germany’s Parliamentary State Secretary, Ulrich Kasparick. The story was widely covered in the German media.

Contacts:
Martin Wilmking can be contacted by e-mail at: ftmw@uaf.edu

Glenn Juday can be contacted by e-mail at: ffgpj.uaf.edu