UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Edward Spagnuolo, who recently graduated from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences with a bachelor's degree in geobiology, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship.
The program recognizes and supports outstanding students who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, according to the NSF. Spagnuolo plans to pursue his doctorate in geosciences at Penn State.
“I am honored to receive this fellowship,” said Spagnuolo, who also graduated with minors in biology, astrobiology, marine science, global studies, and wildlife and fisheries science. “This will give me the freedom to continue my research on the next step of my educational journey.”
At Penn State, Spagnuolo worked in the paleobotany lab of Peter Wilf, professor of geosciences and Spagnuolo’s adviser, studying fossil leaves to better understand how the world looked millions of years ago and how ecosystems may respond to future environmental changes.
His senior thesis led to a paper recently published in the American Journal of Botany. Spagnuolo analyzed thousands of “heat maps” generated by a machine learning program showing tiny features on leaves that the computer used to sort the leaves into family groups. Scoring the heat maps across families, Spagnuolo found patterns specific to each group that may lead to new characteristics scientists can use to identify modern and fossil leaves.
Spagnuolo also worked with Wilf on a project that is under development to create and curate a public database of rainforest vegetation data in Southeast Asia from Myanmar and Thailand to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
Researchers studying rainforests can provide powerful information on what species are abundant and ecologically important through defined study plots, but the data are not always published or easily accessible, Spagnuolo said. He combed through hundreds of papers and found 450 studies with published plot data hidden in regional and specialized journals in various languages.
His senior year, Spagnuolo received an Erickson Discovery Grant to describe approximately 33 million years old plant fossils from Indonesian Borneo. These fossil leaves and seeds provide the earliest non-microscopic evidence of rainforests in Borneo that still persist today, but are under severe human-induced stress from deforestation.
In addition to his work in Wilf’s laboratory, Spagnuolo was a Schreyer Scholar, Millennium Scholar and member of the Presidential Leadership Academy and the EMS Academy of Global Engagement.
“I have wanted to be a paleontologist since I was three years old, and Penn State helped me make that goal come true,” Spagnuolo said. “Through Penn State, I have been able to travel to Costa Rica, Japan, Thailand, and the Caribbean, engage in my own research projects and graduate without debt.”
Spagnuolo plans continue as a doctoral candidate at Penn State as a member of Wilf’s lab.