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The Stephen Jay Gould Prize
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| Sean Carroll receiving the Gould Prize from SSE President H. Allen Orr and Gould Prize Committee chair Sam Scheiner at the Evolution 2010 meeting in Portland, Oregon. |
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The Stephen Jay Gould Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize individuals whose sustained and exemplary efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science and its importance in biology, education, and everyday life in the spirit of Stephen Jay Gould.
The winner of the 2010 Stephen Jay Gould Prize is Sean B. Carroll. Dr. Carroll has had a distinguished career both advancing the science of evolution and in conveying that knowledge to the general public. This breadth is exemplified by his six books, including The Making of the Fittest (2006), which won the Phi Beta Kappa 2007 Science Book Award, and his latest book, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (2009), that was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in non-fiction. He has served as a consulting producer for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) program NOVA, as well as numerous appearances on other shows on PBS, the Discovery Channel, BBC television and radio, and National Public Radio. These efforts have made him a leading spokesperson in the public sphere for evolutionary biology.
Dr. Carroll’s scientific research is at the intersection of the disciplines of evolution and development. He is Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he has been since 1987. He has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed papers and has received numerous honors for his scientific achievements, including fellowships in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serving as president of the Society for Developmental Biology. His classroom achievements have been honored with a Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers. For all of these reasons, it is fitting that Dr. Carroll receive the Gould Prize.
Past Stephen J. Gould Prize winners:
2009 Dr. Eugenie C. Scott
Nomination/Application for the 2011 Stephen J. Gould Prize
The Society for the Study of Evolution’s Committee for the Stephen J. Gould Prize for the Improvement for the Understanding of Evolution is soliciting nominations for the Award for 2011. With this annual award the Society for the Study of Evolution recognizes, promotes, and rewards individuals who have increased public understanding of evolutionary biology and its place in modern science. The award will include a cash prize of $5,000 and the expectation that the recipient will present the Public Outreach Seminar at the Evolution Meeting (expenses for travel/lodging and registration would be covered by the SSE). The awardee should be a leader in evolutionary thought and in public outreach who can deliver an inspiring lecture for both professionals and the broader public at the 2011 meetings of the Society in Norman, Oklahoma.
Nominations should include the CV of the nominee along with a 1-2 page letter describing why this individual is worthy of the award.
Please send nominations via e-mail to the Chair of the Committee, Scott Edwards, at sedwards@fas.harvard.edu. Please submit nominees by December 18. All nominations will be treated confidentially and will be evaluated by members of the Committee and the Council for the Society. An awardee will be announced in early February.
The Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize
The Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding young evolutionary biologist. The prize was established in memory of Professor Dobzhansky by his friends and colleagues, and reflects his lifelong commitment to fostering the research careers of young scientists.
The winner of the 2010 award is Fyodor Kondrashov. In an original and prolific career, Kondrashov has addressed a number of fundamental questions in computational evolutionary genetics. Kondrashov received his bachelor’s degree from Simon’s Rock College and worked as a research scientist for the NCBI before pursuing a Master’s degree at UC Davis and a PhD at UC San Diego. He is currently a group leader at the Bioinformatics and Genomics Program at the Centre for Genomic Regulation, in Barcelona.
Kondrashov has been among the first to use newly available genomic data to address central questions in evolutionary genomics. For example, he has examined the origin and evolution of introns, demonstrating that selection limits intron length in highly expressed genes. He has investigated the evolution of gene duplication, connecting theories of gene duplication and genetic dominance within a single, coherent framework. Using a novel computational approach inspired by Hubble’s demonstration of an expanding universe, Kondrashov has shown that even very distant proteins continue to diverge. Kondrashov’s work on compensatory mutations provides a molecular genetic basis for Dobzansky-Muller incompatibilities while contributing to the detection of medically relevant mutations.
In the decade since Kondrashov received his bachelor’s degree, he has published more than 45 papers, including four in Nature. His mentors praise him for his enormous creativity and his exceptional promise as a researcher whose work will markedly impact the field of evolutionary biology.
Past Dobzhansky Prize winners:
1981 Douglas R. Cavener
1982 Elizabeth Anne Zimmer
1983 Anthony J. Zera
1984 Robb F. Leary
1985 Joshua J. Schwartz
1986
1987 Ary A. Hoffman
1988 Steven A. Frank
1989 Bernard J. Crespi
1990 Erik Greene
1991 Jonathan Losos
1992 Barry Sinervo
1993 H. Allen Orr
1994 David Haig
1995 David Begun
1996 Rufus A. Johnstone
1997 Massimo Pigliucci
1998 Christian Peter Klingenberg
1999 Jason B. Wolf
2000 Thomas Lenormand
2001 Alexander Badyaev
2002 Howard Rundle
2003 Daven Presgraves
2004 Aneil Agrawal
2005 Daniel Bolnick
2006 Russel Bonduriansky
2007 Franziska Michor
2008 Patrik Nosil
2009 Judith Mank
Nomination/Application for the 2011 Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize
The Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding young evolutionary biologist. The prize was established in memory of Professor Dobzhansky by his friends and colleagues, and reflects his lifelong commitment to fostering the research careers of young scientists.
Eligibility – The candidate must have a Ph.D. (or equivalent) awarded no earlier than May 2007 and no later than 1st February 2011, and must be actively involved in research in the field of evolutionary biology. There are no other restrictions. Applicants do not have to be members of the Society for the Study of Evolution, but such membership is encouraged.
Nomination/Application.- Candidates may apply directly or may be nominated. Established researchers are encouraged to nominate outstanding young scientists who may be unaware of the existence and prestige of this prize. Each candidacy must be supported by the following materials detailing the candidate's career to date: (1) a curriculum vitae, (2) a summary of research accomplishments, (3) a 3-5 page statement of research plans for the next 5 years (note length limitation), (4) pdf copies of three recent publications, (5) names and addresses of the three referees (including the nominating scientist where applicable) who have sent supporting letters. N.B.: THE THREE LETTERS OF REFERENCE ARE SENT SEPARATELY, but no application will be considered without these letters.
All application/nomination materials must be sent as PDF e-mail attachments, preferably united in a single file. No file type other than PDF will be accepted. The deadline for receipt of all materials, including letters of reference, is 15 February 2011. All materials should be sent to the secretary of SSE (Judy L. Stone) at the following email address:
jstone@colby.edu
Award.- The Dobzhansky Prize is accompanied by a check for U.S. $5000, and will be awarded at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution, 2011, in Norman, Oklahoma. The recipient is expected to be present to receive the award and to give an oral presentation about his/her research. To facilitate attendance, the SSE provides funds to cover the costs of conference registration, accommodation during the conference, and expenses for travel to and from the conference. The recipient will be notified of the award by late March 2011.
The R.A. Fisher Prize
The R. A. Fisher Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution for an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation paper published in the journal Evolution during a given calendar year.
This prize pays tribute to one of the most distinguished evolutionists of the 20th Century, Sir Ronald Fisher, who with JBS Haldane and Sewell Wright, developed theoretical population genetics and established its central position within evolutionary biology. Fisher’s interests ranged widely, but placed particular emphasis on the dynamics of mutation and selection and how these contribute to adaptation.
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Dr. Britt Koskella
2010 Prize Winner |
This year’s Fisher Prize is awarded to Dr. Britt Koskella, for her paper:
Koskella, B. and C. M. Lively. 2009. Evidence for negative frequency-dependent selection during experimental coevolution of a freshwater snail and a sterilizing trematode. Evolution 63: 2213-2221.
There has been a great deal of speculation and theorizing about the possible role of host-parasite coevolution in the maintenance of genetic diversity. This paper tests this idea directly. Koskella and Lively performed an experimental evolution analysis using the freshwater snail, Potamopyrgus, and its parasite, Microphallus, a trematode that can sterilize its snail host. Under a Red Queen view of coevolution, one would predict that parasites adapt to the most common host genotype, giving rise to a rare-type advantage among hosts. The authors monitored genetic variation within host populations-- both experimental (with parasites) and control (without parasites)-- over multiple generations. As predicted, the most common host genotype declined in frequency in experimental, but not control, populations. The experimentally coevolving parasite also became better at infecting the most common host type. This work provides an elegant test of important evolutionary theory and, in particular, provides strong support for Red Queen dynamics. Dr. Koskella is currently an NSF International Research Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz and at Oxford University, where she continues to study host-parasite coevolution.
Past Fisher Prize winners:
2006 Maurine Neiman
2007 Guillaume Martin
2008 R. Brian Langerhans
2009 Megan Higgie
Nomination/Application for the 2011 R. A. Fisher Prize
The R. A. Fisher Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution for an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation paper published in the journal Evolution during a given calendar year. The award comes with a $1000 honorarium.
Eligibility -- To be eligible for consideration, a manuscript must be based on graduate work of the primary author.
Nominations/Application -- Authors of eligible manuscripts may initiate a nomination upon acceptance of their manuscripts for publication. Nominations must include the final version of the manuscript, dissertation completion date, and a supporting letter from the Ph.D. supervisor or other individual familiar with the work. If the candidate is not the sole author of the paper, the supporting letter should identify the candidate’s role in completing the research and writing the paper.
Nominations for manuscripts published in 2009 will be accepted throughout the year but must arrive no later than *January 31, 2011*. The complete nomination should be submitted electronically to the secretary of SSE (Judy L. Stone) at the following email address:
jstone@colby.edu
Award -- The Fisher Prize is accompanied by a check for U.S. $1000, and will be awarded at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution, 2011, in Norman, Oklahoma. The recipient is expected to be present to receive the award and to give an oral presentation about his/her research. To facilitate attendance, the SSE provides funds to cover the costs of conference registration, accommodation during the conference, and expenses for travel to and from the conference. The recipient will be notified of the award by late March 2011.
The Hamilton Award
2010 Winner
Amanda Izzo, University of Michigan
Title: Females gain direct benefits in a non-economic, lek-based mating system
Studying the European paper wasp, Amanda Izzo asked what benefits do females gain by mating with males of different phenotypes. Her work addresses the puzzle of female preferences in systems where thie is no obvious resource transfers. She showed that transfer of the sperm mass to the female during mating confers a direct overwinter survival advantage that depends on the quality of males. In contrast to the known cases where males transfer deleterious compounds to females, this work presents a novel example of a beneficial transfer.
2010 Honorable Mention
Benjamin Blackman, Duke University
Gene duplication and evolutionary innovation during sunflower domestication
Christopher Martin, University of California – Davis
Exceptional morphological diversification rates in two adaptive radiations of Cyprinodon pupfishes
David Lowry, University of Texas – Austin
A life-history altering chromosomal inversion involved in adaptation and ecological reproductive isolation
Ian Wang, University of California – Davis
Reduced conspicuousness evolves with increased toxicity in an aposematic poison frog
Rosemary Grant Awards for Graduate Student Research
The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) is pleased to announce the first annual Rosemary Grant Graduate Student Research Award competition. These awards are to assist students in the early stages of their Ph.D. programs by enabling them to collect preliminary data (to pursue additional sources of support) or to enhance the scope of their research beyond current funding limits (e.g. by visiting additional field sites, or working at other labs). Students will need to demonstrate how the proposed work is outside any related funding for the project already held by the student or advisor.
2010 Winners
Cheryl Marie Andam, University of Connecticut
Chelsea Berns, Iowa State University
Megan DeMarche, Colorado State University
Eva Fischer, Colorado State University
Andrew Furness, University of California, Riverside
Emily Jacobs-Palmer, Harvard University
Christopher Muir, Indiana University, Bloomington
Carlos Prada, Louisiana State University
Darren Rebar, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Benjamin Sandkam, Simon Fraser University
Seema Sheth, Colorado State University
Sonal Singhal, University of California, Berkeley
Frank Smith, University of Connecticut
Caitlin Smukowski, Duke University
Kathryn Stewart, Queen’s University
Katherine Stryjewski, Boston University
Conor Taff, University of California, Davis
Marjorie Weber, Cornell University
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