Excerpt from Volume XII No. 17

January 19, 2004

Achievements
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ning Gao has been awarded a grant of $92,900 by the Lake Champlain Research Consortium to fund a study by her and other scientists of mercury contamination in Lake Champlain. The project, entitled "Enhancements to the Lake Champlain Mercury Mass Balance: A Multidisciplinary Approach," will be headed by Gao, with collaborators from Dartmouth College, Clarkson University, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, the University of Vermont and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Gao is also principal investigator for the project "St. Lawrence University Acquisition of Instrumentation for Monitoring Climate, Atmospheric and Aquatic Environmental Processes in Northern New York,” which has been awarded a grant of $194,476 by the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program to support the purchase of weather station equipment; ambient air and aquatic monitoring equipment; and analytical instruments for the University's Integrated Science Education Initiative (ISEI). Additional faculty who are expected to direct undergraduate research activities in the program are Associate Professor of Biology Bradley S. Baldwin, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Carolyn E. Johns, Grace Fippinger Assistant Professor of Biology Erika L. Barthelmess and Assistant Professor of Geology Stephen D. Robinson.