2024 Jumpstart Postdoctoral Program Awardees Announced

2024 Jumpstart Postdoctoral Program Awardees Announced
February 2024

The Charles E. Schmidt College of Science has selected the awardees of the 2024 Jumpstart Postdoctoral Program. This is the second year of the initiative, which Dean Valery Forbes launched in 2022 to “jumpstart” multidisciplinary research collaborations between faculty and postdoctoral associates to solve some of today’s most complex societal challenges.

The goal of the program is to facilitate successful award applications from talented postdoctoral researchers with diverse backgrounds. The new cohort represents scientific studies from across the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, with collaborators from FAU’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Each postdoctoral scholar will receive a salary following the National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoc scale, with benefits, and $5,000 per year for research supplies and research-related travel. Postdoctoral projects are funded for up to two years, assuming satisfactory progress toward research goals are made during the first year. All teams have committed to submitting at least one proposal for external funding by the end of the Jumpstart project.

Learn more about the program.

2024 Jumpstart Postdoctoral Program Awardees

Postdoc: Amaury Dechaux
Title: "Emergence of Biological Agency"
Principal investigator: Eminent Scholar in Science and Professor Scott Kelso, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Co-principal investigator: Professor Erik Engeberg, Ph.D., College of Engineering and Computer Science

Postdoc: Liberty Boyd, Ph.D.
Title: “Foraging Ecology and HAB Toxin Exposure Risk of Loggerhead Sea Turtles (Caretta caretta) in Coastal Florida”
Principal investigator: Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor John Baldwin, Ph.D., Department of Biological Sciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Co-principal investigator: Associate Research Professor Matt Ajemian, Ph.D., Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

Postdoc: Samantha Kuschke, Ph.D.
Title: “Unveiling the Presence of and Potential Factors Leading to Sea Turtle Egg Fusariosis”
Principal investigator: Chair and Associate Professor Tiffany Roberts Briggs, Ph.D., Department of Geosciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Co-principal investigator: Associate Professor Michael McCoy, Ph.D., Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

Postdoc: Darien Satterfield, Ph.D.
Title: “Collective Behavior: Understanding Shark Groups Using Kinematic, Network, and Fluid Modeling Approaches”
Principal investigator: Associate Professor Marianne Porter, Ph.D., Department of Biological Sciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Co-principal investigator: Assistant Professor Ashkan Fahimipour, Ph.D., Department of Biological Sciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science

Postdoc: Willian Carlos Siqueira Lima, Ph.D.
Title: “Assessing the Potential of Nature-based Solutions in Urban Areas for Enhancing Urban Resilience Planning”
Principal investigator: Assistant Professor Melina Matos, Ph.D., Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Co-principal investigator: Assistant Professor Stephanie Wakefield, Ph.D., Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science ge of Science