Subject: [Fwd: Letter for Kiona Ogle]
From: Connie Woodhouse <[email-masked]>
To: "Steven W. Leavitt" <[email-masked]>, Steve Archer <[email-masked]>, MKH <[email-masked]>, Katie Hirschboeck <[email-masked]>, Don Falk <[email-masked]>, Alison Macalady <[email-masked]>
Cc: Ana Martinez <[email-masked]>, Lori Wilson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:14:15 -0600

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Letter for Kiona Ogle
Date: 	Sat, 3 Apr 2010 15:54:32 -0600
From: 	Hobbs,Tom <[email-masked]>
To: 	Connie Woodhouse <[email-masked]>
CC: 	Tom Hobbs <[email-masked]>

Connie Woodhouse
Associate Professor
School of Geography and Development
412 Harvill Building, Box #2

Dear Dr. Woodhouse:
I am writing this letter in support of the application of Kiona Ogle for
your faculty opening at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research.

I have known Kiona for about five years; early on as someone with whom I
shared the same meeting schedule, but later as a productive colleague.  She
and I worked together with Yiqi Luo on a successful NSF Research
Coordination Network proposal.  We also co-authored a paper, now in press at
Ecological Applications, describing a new curriculum in model-data
assimilation for graduate students in ecology.

During 2008-2009, I was a rotating program officer in Population and
Community Ecology at the National Science Foundation. One of my tasks was to
help organize a seminar series on cutting edge research in ecology.  Without
hesitation, I invited Kiona Ogle to talk about her work using hierarchical
modeling to describe physiological, community, and ecosystem processes. I
invited her because I believe that her work in this area represents the
future of ecological inquiry.

The success of any program in environmental science will depend, in a way
that is truly fundamental, on the ability to aggregate data from multiple
sources to provide insight into how processes work and to make reliable
forecasts about their future behavior. A reliable forecast is one that makes
predictions accompanied by rigorous,statistically coherent estimates of
uncertainty---uncertainty arising from model misspecification, from
observation error and from variation among individuals or sites. There are
few ecologists working today who can do this as well as Kiona can. She
combines a deep knowledge of biology with a sophisticated understanding of
how to gain biological insight using the most contemporary statistical
methods.

The approaches she uses would make her an ideal member of the
interdisciplinary teams that are essential to environmental research.  She
could provide the quantitative ³glue² that brings together intellectual
contributions from many different investigators. I have no doubt that she
would build a strong and inclusive research program at Arizona.

Kiona is personable, quick to smile, and doesn¹t take herself too seriously.
I have thoroughly enjoyed working  with her. She gives a great talk; she
writes well.  She does the things she commits to do on time.

I strongly recommend Kiona Olge to you.

Sincerely,

N. Thompson Hobbs
Professor, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80524
970-491-5738 
http://www.nrel.colostate.edu/nrel/apps/directory/people.php?Main_ID=204

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-- 
Connie Woodhouse
School of Geography and Development
412 Harvill Building, Box #2
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721-0076 

phone: 520-626-0235
fax: 520-621-2889
e-mail: [email-masked]