Society of Systematic Biologists

The Ernst Mayr Award is given to the presenter of the outstanding student talk in the field of systematics at the annual meetings of the Society of Systematic Biologists. The award consists of $US 1000 and a 2-year free subscription to Systematic Biology. This year's competition at the Portland meetings was very stiff and we congratulate all of the participants. We split the award this year between two awardees: David Winter, Otago University, for his talk, Mayr’s hydra grows another head: could Rarotonga’s Lamprocystis radiation have arisen by sympatric speciation?, and Jeremy Brown, University of California, Berkeley, for his talk, Detecting inadequate Bayesian phylogenetic estimates.

Graduate Student Research Awards are given to students in the first two years of their research in systematics to facilitate data collection and enhance opportunities for additional funding, such as the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants from the National Science Foundation. This year there were 59 applicants and 15 awards were made. Congratulations to the following students awardees:

Rayna Bell, Cornell University
Rebecca Chong, Colorado State University
Emily DiBlasi, University of Buffalo
Michelle Duennes, University of Illinois
Tricia Goulding, San Francisco State University
Jo-Anne Holley, University of Illinois
Justin Kratovil, University of Kentucky
John McVay, Louisiana State University
Stuart Nielsen, University of Mississippi
Lorelei Patrick, Louisiana State University
Carlos Prada, Louisiana State University
Noah Reid, Louisiana State University
Katie Stryjewskis, Boston University
Simon Uribe-Convers, University of Idaho
Ben Winger, University of Chicago