DRIAnnualReport 2015 | Page 7

Foothill High School student names new microorganism B renna Hardtner, a student from Foothill High School in Henderson, Nevada was honored in 2015 as the winner of DRI’s first Bacteria Naming Contest. Hardtner’s entry was selected from nearly 100 submissions from high school biology students across the Clark Country School District. The newly discovered bacterium, which Hardtner named “Thermoanaerosceptrum fracticalcis”, will be acknowledged in an internationally peer-reviewed scientific research paper. DRI scientist Scott Hamilton-Brehm, Ph.D., discovered the bacterium in a sample of water that was collected from an aquifer at a depth of 923 meters (almost two miles) below the surface of the Southern Nevada desert. RESEARCH STORIES FROM ACROSS THE INSTITUTE DRI hosts 2015 conference on military geosciences T he 11th International Conference on Military Geosciences (ICMG), was hosted in June 2015 by DRI at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Held every two years, alternately between North America and Europe, the conference provides a venue for military personnel, academics, and practitioners from government service and commercial enterprises to explore a wide range of military geosciences. The 2015 conference theme focused on The Future of Military Geosciences: Scientific Capabilities, Global Security and Sustainability. For more than 40 years, DRI research scientists, students and staff have been supporting the missions of our U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army Research Office and many other federal and private-sector military partners. Military geosciences remains one of DRI’s core scientific focus areas and the future of applied research and application in this field is critical to our nation’s security. 7