McKay awarded prestigious Humboldt Fellowship

R. Michael McKay, biological sciences, has received a 2005 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship.

The fellowship will enable him to continue his work on aquatic biosensors at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany.

McKay and George Bullerjahn, another biology faculty member specializing in microbial physiology, are developing new technologies to better assess nutrient availability in aquatic ecosystems. Many regions of the ocean suffer from a shortage of iron or nitrogen. A lack of one of these key nutrients inhibits the oceans’ productivity.

McKay will collaborate with Julie La Roche of the institute’s Marine Biogeochemistry Division to further work on a project that he and Bullerjahn initiated, titled “Development and Characterization of Whole Cell Luminescent Bioreporters of Iron for Use in Marine Environments.”

While in Germany, McKay will focus on the development of diatom bioreporter organisms, one of the most important plankton groups in terms of global production.

“Access to the expertise and research infrastructure available at the Leibniz Institute will be important in providing the opportunity to field test our bioreporter strains with water collected from the Baltic Sea, a region where both nitrogen and iron deficiency have been reported,” said McKay.

Since receiving his Ph.D. in biology at McGill University in 1992, McKay has completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Delaware, University of Alaska-Fairbanks and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The 2001 recipient of Bowling Green’s Outstanding Young Scholar Award, McKay has published a book chapter and 32 refereed articles, including 18 since he joined the BGSU faculty in 1997. His papers have appeared in Nature Limnology and Oceanography, among others.

McKay will leave in January for Kiel, where he will be working for seven months.

The Humboldt Foundation is a non-profit organization established by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote international research cooperation. It enables highly qualified scholars who do not reside in Germany to spend extended periods of time in the country doing collaborative research, and enables German scholars to work with their international counterparts at Humboldt-sponsored institutes.

Every year, the foundation awards 500 Humboldt Research Fellowships, enabling researchers from all over the world to work with German colleagues in Germany. The Humboldt network connects more than 20,000 Humboldt recipients in 130 countries.

Sponsorship of individual researchers during periods spent in Germany and longstanding follow-up contacts have been trademarks of the foundation’s work to promote an active network of scholars worldwide since 1953.