On March 27, the American Association for the Advancement of Science announced Â鶹ӳ» professors Steve Vander Wall and Bob Ryan are among the 2024 class of AAAS Fellows, a distinguished honor for scientists. Vander Wall, an ecologist in the College of Science, and Ryan, a biochemist in the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources, join the ranks of 11 other Â鶹ӳ» professors with this honorific.
AAAS Fellows are scientists recognized for their achievements in areas of science such as teaching, administration, research, excellence in communicating science to the public, and more.
“This year’s class of Fellows are the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities,” said Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D., AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals in a .
The fellows will be recognized at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., in June and will receive a pin with a gold and blue rosette.
“This prestigious achievement recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science not only reflect the excellence of Dr. Vander Wall and Dr. Ryan, but also brings pride to the entire University of Â鶹ӳ»,” Mridul Gautam, vice president for research and innovation at the University, said.
Bob Ryan, Professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
When Bob Ryan started working at the Â鶹ӳ» in 2017, it was as much a homecoming as it was a new step in his career. Ryan earned both his bachelor's degree in 1977 and his Ph.D. in 1982 at the University.
“It’s just been a wonderful experience, seeing the tremendous growth and the way the University has evolved since I was a student,” Ryan said. “To be able to contribute at this point in my career is very special to me.”
Ryan studies how lipids are transported in the body. Lipids are fats that can collect in the body, and, when this occurs, play an important role in disease development.
“I learned about lipids while I was a student at the University, and I carried that knowledge with me throughout my career, seeking to learn how they are involved in disease,” Ryan said.
Ryan, who also conducts research as part of the University's Experiment Station, studied lipids under his Ph.D. advisor Gary Blomquist, now a professor emeritus at the University. To date, Ryan feels that his most important contribution to science has been identifying the metabolic origin of specific biomarkers which arise from different lipid-related disease processes. Prior to Ryan’s work on those biomarkers, scientists and doctors didn’t know how they were related to the disease process, preventing a full understanding of these disorders. When a deeper understanding of these biomarkers became known, improved diagnosis and treatments became possible, improving patient outcomes.
Ryan acknowledged his mentors, who he said provided excellent training in how to develop research questions that could produce meaningful results. Ryan applied those skills to better understand important biochemical processes, while sharing those skills with his own students.
“If you think of our bodies, there is biochemistry going on all the time,” Ryan said. “We have a lot of students come through my lab who want to study medicine. They can gain a fundamental understanding of how biochemical processes function in the human body.”
Ryan has passed his knowledge along to dozens of students, from undergraduates who learned the basics of scientific research to the many graduate students he’s advised.
“Training and mentoring students is a major part of my career,” Ryan said. “It’s very rewarding and a positive use of my time.”
Alongside Blomquist and another professor emeritus Ron Pardini, who Ryan said were influential in his career, Ryan credited Bill Payne, dean of the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources, with setting a “wonderful tone for success” in the college. He also acknowledged Alice and Fred Ottoboni, who endowed a chair position in diet and disease prevention that Ryan was awarded in 2022, for helping to advance his career.
“I am thrilled to see the AAAS recognize Bob,” Payne said. “His body of work speaks for itself and is respected internationally. His research involving lipid transport and metabolism is truly moving the needle toward better addressing cardiovascular disease.”
Ryan said he is humbled, yet very appreciative of being recognized by the AAAS.
“This is a national recognition from a major organization that I’ve belonged to for more than 40 years,” Ryan said. “It means your peers view your life’s work as a significant contribution to the field. It is very heartening and gives you a very good feeling about how you spent your life and your academic career.”
Ryan also recognized his colleagues in the college and the University as a whole for providing a solid foundation for professors to conduct important research.
“The College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources has been very supportive, and I have had wonderful colleagues in my department,” he said. “You can’t do this on your own. You have to have a cadre of supportive colleagues. The University is all about supporting research, and that has been a tremendous shot in the arm for my research program. I couldn’t do it without that.”
Steve Vander Wall, Professor in the Department of Biology
Steve Vander Wall’s decades-long career has provided an understanding of how birds and rodents contribute to seed dispersal in forests. As birds and rodents bury and store pine seeds to eat them at a later time, some seeds are forgotten and are able to germinate and grow into trees. Animals that eat the seeds spread them throughout the forest, allowing for greater distribution of seeds. This relationship between the animals and plants, which benefits both parties, is known as a mutualism.
“It’s a cool evolutionary process that I find quite fascinating,” Vander Wall said. “The animals have been modified in certain ways to be better dispersers, and the plants have been modified in certain ways to produce seeds that are better able to be dispersed by the animals.”
While many students who take a biology class now see these mutualisms in their textbooks, there are still many mutualisms that are poorly understood or not even known. Until a decade ago, the prevailing theory was that the now-extinct giant sloth was primarily responsible for Joshua tree dispersal. Vander Wall and one of his graduate students found that it was rodents, not giant sloths, that are largely responsible for dispersal of the Joshua tree.
“I heard of this award when I was in Australia traveling and it took me by surprise,” Vander Wall said of his AAAS Fellowship. “I had no idea that anybody was going to nominate me for this award. It's so nice to be recognized.”
Vander Wall’s trajectory toward this award began more than 50 years ago, when he was an undergraduate student conducting ecology research. He became interested in how pine seeds are dispersed by animals. He recognized that pine seeds with a fibrous wing were easily distributed by the wind, and wanted to investigate how pine seeds of a different species that lacked a wing would be dispersed. As he progressed in his education, Vander Wall continued to study those systems in other pine trees and other regions in Utah, California and Â鶹ӳ».
“It's important to recognize that these kinds of mutualism play a really important role in our forest ecosystems,” Vander Wall said.
Vander Wall is also one of the only people to study these mutualisms using radioisotopes to track seeds. He estimates that he has employed that method for 40 or 50 research studies during this career. Using radioisotopes allowed Vander Wall to collect very high-quality data, which he suspects contributed to his nomination for the AAAS Fellowship.
Much of Vander Wall’s research has been conducted in the Whittell Forest & Wildlife Area, which is a 2,650-acre forested property just west of Washoe Valley owned by the University and administered by Research & Innovation. He said having access to that space where he could conduct experiments and test his methods was invaluable to his research success.
“Without that forest ecosystem, I'm not sure I would have gotten very far doing this work,” Vander Wall said. “The Whittell Forest has been an incredible laboratory for me, and for lots of other faculty here.”
As the biology graduate program director, Vander Wall has interacted with dozens of students pursuing careers in ecology.
“It's been very, very rewarding for me work with graduate students,” Vander Wall said. “Studying these types of interactions provides a really good experimental framework to test hypotheses and explore ideas.”
The dean of the College of Science, Louisa Hope-Weeks, said the college is proud to support such foundational research.
“Steve’s work has shaped ecological research studies and created a legacy of knowledge and understanding when it comes to forest ecosystems,” College of Science Dean Louisa Hope-Weeks said.
Vander Wall expressed his appreciation for the Department of Biology, where he’s worked for more than three decades.
“I owe a great debt to the department, and to the College of Science in general,” Vander Wall said. “I've really enjoyed being here since I came in 1988, and it was a very rewarding experience during that time.”
