KU News Release

Joy Ward

More Information

• Feature:
  About Ward's research
• Research Matters:
  Audio interview
• Department of Ecology
  and Evolutionary Biology

LAWRENCE — Joy Ward, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, is a 2009 winner of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the White House announced today.

It is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a young scientist or engineer in the United States.

Ward researches plants that grew during the last ice age —about 18,000 years to 20,000 years ago — when low carbon dioxide levels may have been highly limiting for plant life.

According to the National Science Foundation, the PECASE awards “are intended to identify and honor outstanding researchers who are beginning their independent research careers, and to provide recognition of their potential for leadership across the frontiers of scientific knowledge during the 21st century.”

“There is a tremendous amount of excellent science being conducted in this country, and I am truly humbled and honored to have received this presidential recognition,” Ward said. “The University of Kansas provides an excellent environment for conducting scientific research, and I am fortunate to have such wonderful colleagues and resources in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Furthermore, I am very appreciative of the assistance that the Institute for Educational Research and Public Service has provided for my outreach activities to students and for the support of the National Science Foundation and Dorothy Lynch through the Wohlgemuth Faculty Scholar Award. In the years ahead, I look forward to training the next generation of scientists and meeting future scientific challenges at the University of Kansas.”

Through her investigations of changing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from the last ice age through the future,Ward shows how plants might fare in a future of much higher carbon dioxide concentrations on Earth.

“Plants are amazing,” Ward said. “They can actually take carbon right out of the atmosphere and use it as their food source, whereas we as humans have to eat a variety of organic food sources in order to get carbon in our diet. But the availability of carbon dioxide has changed over geological time.”

According to Ward, ancient air bubbles trapped inside ice cores show that there was about half as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the last ice age compared with present times.

In her lab at KU, Ward has found that today’s plants have difficulty thriving under such conditions.

“We can scrub carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at very controlled levels to simulate the past,” said Ward. “We have found that the average reduction in growth is about 50 percent for plants grown at these ice age carbon dioxide levels compared with the modern value. For some species, the reduction in growth can be as high as 90 percent and some species completely fail to reproduce.”

Ward earlier won a $869,000 CAREER award from the NSF for her research — an honor that qualified her for the PECASE award announced today.

Ward and 19 other NSF recipients of the PECASE award will be recognized for their scientific achievements at a White House ceremony this fall.