smithsonian fellowship

All gardeners know what it’s like to try and weed a garden. Even when you keep up with it, sometimes you miss a root or a seed, and the weeds grow back.

As it turns out, this experience applies not only to human gardeners but also to a type of ant that farms its own garden of fungus.

PhD candidate Kirsten Gotting studies evolutionary biology and fungus-growing ants as a member of the Currie Lab in the Department of Bacteriology and the Genetics Training Program. The Currie Lab’s collection of leaf-cutter ants, one of many types of fungus-growing ant, offers a window into the relationships between the ants, the fungus, and other pathogens and bacteria.

Geoscience graduate student Yihang Fang will test whether protein control is the mechanism helping leaf-cutter ants form a layer of mineral “armor” as a fellow at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History.

There are two major collections of Korean American artist Nam June Paik’s work. Kyungso Min has already studied the collection at South Korea’s Nam June Paik Art Center. So, the natural next step for Min, a doctoral student in art history at UW–Madison, was to study the Nam June Paik Archive housed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.This summer, Min will have the chance to do just that as a Smithsonian Institution Fellow.