Jay Storz, Willa Cather Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, has earned the University of Nebraska system’s most esteemed honor for research, creative activity, teaching and engagement.
The Outstanding Research and Creative Activity award is a President’s Excellence Award that recognizes faculty who have conducted outstanding research or creative activity of national or international significance.
Storz’s research in evolutionary biology centers on questions about physiological mechanisms of adaptation to extreme environments. In particular, a main goal of his research is to discover how high-elevation animals have evolved to survive and function in low-oxygen conditions. Storz organizes and leads mountaineering expeditions in the Andes of South America to survey the elevational limits of animal life, and he coordinates a large network of collaborators at research institutes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru.
His research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation since joining the faculty at UNL. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Geographic Explorer, an honorary professor of zoophysiology at Aarhus University, Denmark, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
