Rudgers earns Fulbright Award

Jennifer Rudgers, a Distinguished Professor of biology at The University of New Mexico, will spend fall 2026 on a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in Cádiz, Spain. Rudgers, who has been at the university since 2012, is also the director of the Sevillita Long-Term Ecological Research Program, one of the projects currently undertaken by UNM's Accelerating Resilience Innovations in Drylands (ARID) Institute.

The Fulbright Program is one of the most prestigious awards in higher education, providing opportunities for U.S. students and faculty to teach and conduct research in programs around the globe. Rudgers is one of three UNM professors to receive Fulbright awards this year, along with Amaris Ketcham and Tiffany Bourelle, who will study in Scotland and France, respectively. Approximately 800 scholars from across the country earn Fulbright Awards every year.

The program was established in 1946 to encourage cultural and educational exchange. 2026 marks the 80th year of the program, which gives participants from 160 countries the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research abroad. The program is run by the U.S. Department of State in conjunction with governments around the world.

Rudgers' award will take her to Spain, where she will focus her work on poorly understood aspects of climate variability, jointly across dryland and marine biomes. By linking the drylands of the southwestern US with the drylands and coastal/marine ecosystems of Mediterranean Spain, this Fulbright project will generate novel, comparative insights into climate resilience while fostering international cultural exchanges around ecosystem sustainability.

This fellowship cultivates mutual understanding between nations by uniting a US drylands research team (Sevilleta LTER) and the Instituto de Ciencias Marinas de Andalucía, which is hosted at the University of Cádiz.

The project will explore pulse dynamics, the connection between their amplification and increased climate variability, and the link between different types of noise and the susceptibility of certain populations to climate variability.

UNM faculty interested in learning more about opportunities such as Fulbright can reach out to Frances Hayashida at [email protected].