Dear Colleagues and Friends,

 

I would appreciate your help in sharing the following opportunity with potentially interested individuals (e.g., students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty and researchers). Many thanks!

 

*** NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Awards ***

With support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Michigan State University (MSU), NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Awards are given to students, postdocs, and junior researchers (e.g., assistant professors) to cover expenses associated with attending the meeting of  IALE-North America  (North America Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology), which will be held in Athens, Georgia, April 26-30, 2026. This will be the 25th anniversary of the NASA-MSU Program.

The application materials include a cover letter, application form, abstract, resume/CV, and budget. The abstract should also have been submitted to the IALE-NA meeting website. Applications are judged based on the merits of the applicants' abstracts, financial needs, and professional backgrounds and goals.

Presentations (oral or poster) should focus on telecoupling (environmental-socioeconomic interactions over distances, such as human and animal migration, species dispersal, species invasion, disease spread, sound/noise transmission, spread of pollutants and wastes, trade of goods and products, flows of ecosystem services, environmental and hydrological flows, foreign investment, technology transfer, water transfer, and tourism) and/or metacoupling. Topics may include applications of the telecoupling framework or metacoupling framework to address issues across landscapes or coupled human and natural systems (e.g., dynamics, pattern, process, structure, function, and sustainability). For more information about coupled human and natural systems, please see: Science and Ambio.

Awardees will also have opportunities to interact with some leading scientists and other meeting attendees, including a special dinner on April 27, and telecoupling / metacoupling workshop #4  (https://www.ialena.org/workshops-2026.html ) and symposium #5 (https://www.ialena.org/symposia-2026.html).

Students, postdocs, and other junior scholars (e.g., assistant professors) from around the world (except former award recipients) are welcome to apply. Please apply here (https://msu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9nsQ6KiZMNCyWFg) . The application deadline is December 15, 2025.

Questions can be directed to:

Dr. Jianguo (Jack) Liu
Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability
Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI  48824, USA
liuji@msu.edu