In 2006 I joined the UIC faculty as a member of the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy (IESP) and Professor of Ecology and Evolution in the Department of Biological Sciences. Currently I am Associate Director of IESP, and am active in UIC's NSF IGERT training program, LEAP, which trains doctoral students in the ecology, management and restoration of integrated natural-human landscapes. My research interests focus on the functional aspects of biodiversity, particularly as biodiversity relates to food-web structure and dynamics, responses of terrestrial ecosystems to perturbations ranging from climate change to invasive species, and the reciprocal connections between species interactions in complex networks and ecosystem processes. Previous research into these topics has focused on detritus-based food webs on the forest floor, and grazing and detrital webs in agroecosystems. Arthropods play major roles in these webs, with spiders having been a predator of particular interest in my research program [Spiders in Ecological Webs (1993)]. Some students in my current lab group in Chicago continue this focus on spiders and other arthropods of the litter layer, while others are studying invasive plants, earthworms, interactions between aboveground and belowground subsystems, and policies in land management and ecological restoration. The approaches my research team utilize are varied --- manipulative field experiments; analysis of natural patterns of variation across landscapes --- the "natural experiment"; mesocosm experiments; molecular, immunological and stable isotope techniques; and mathematical modeling. As Co-Chair of the Chicago Wilderness Science Team with Liam Heneghan and Lynne Westphal, I am collaborating on research projects investigating the dynamics of coupled social-ecological systems in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. These projects involve active, on-going collaborations with colleagues from numerous organizations and institutions: DePaul University, USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station, Field Museum, Lincoln Park Zoo, Purdue University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Chicago Botanic Garden, Loyola University, City of Chicago Department of the Environment, and several county forest preserve districts and land trusts of Chicago Wilderness. For an overview of recently completed research projects, please consult recent publications. For an in-depth description of current research in the lab, please see current funding and visit the graduate student and post-doc web pages. Before coming to UIC I held faculty positions at the University of Kentucky, University of Maryland Baltimore County and the University of New Mexico; was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen; and a Fulbright scholar at the University of Buenos Aires. A complete listing of positions held, research funding, publications, lectures, symposia presentations and other activities is contained in my curriculum vitae APPLIED ENERGY RESEARCH -- Prof. Wise investigating the intricacies of wind-powered transportation on his Great Lakes research vessel, Wind Wise . . . . . . .  |
