The Society for the Study of Evolution announces the election of the SSE President-Elect to be in place on January 1, 2021. The election will be conducted online from December 7 to December 21, 2020. You can learn more about the President-Elect's duties and responsibilities in the SSE Officers Handbook.
Click each candidate's name to jump to their statement and a link to their CV. Once you have made your choice, access the ballot to cast your vote by clicking the "Vote Now" button or clicking this link. Thank you for your participation!
SSE President-Elect: Laura F. Galloway, Emília P. Martins
Or click here to view the ballot.
Deadline: December 21, 2020
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Laura F. Galloway, Department of Biology, University of Virginia
I am honored to be considered for the office of President of the Society for the Study of Evolution. SSE has been important to me throughout my career, providing a platform for my first national research presentation and the first publication from my dissertation. SSE is my scientific home and community. I consider service to academic societies an essential part of my professional life, and have been pleased to give back to this society through service as a member of Council, North American Vice President, Associate Editor for Evolution, reviewer of countless Rosemary Grant proposals, and as a member of the Dobzhansky and Gould award committees. I have also served as an Editor or Associate Editor for New Phytologist, Ecology and Proceedings for the Royal Society B, as well as Treasurer and Executive Committee member for the Botanical Society of America, and member of several American Society of Naturalist committees. My research has long used ecological and quantitative genetics to explore mechanisms and patterns of evolution in natural plant populations. Recently, I have been working to understand the contribution of cytonuclear interactions to incipient speciation, as well as the causes of range-wide patterns of mating system variation in a phylogeographic context.
What challenges does SSE face today? To maintain our leading role and vitality, SSE must be relevant to the next generation of evolutionary biologists. Our ability to recruit and support evolutionary biologists from across socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, identity, and national backgrounds will broaden the study of evolution as well as lead to greater interest in the field by the public. I embrace SSE’s action plan for enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion. As President, my priority will be building institutional machinery to increase diversity both in our membership and our leadership. I have been, and will continue to be, a champion of initiatives supporting early-career members by promoting networking, professional development and career awareness, particularly non-academic careers. I appreciate the Graduate Student Advisory Council’s efforts in this area, and commit to increasing our portfolio of these activities at the Evolution meeting and SSE social media outlets.
As President, I will also work to make sure that SSE is open and inviting to the full breadth of research in evolutionary biology, that our meetings are a platform for sharing this research, and that our journals are sought-after outlets for publication. To do this, I will work with the society leadership and our publisher to ensure that Evolution maintains its status as a premier journal given the increasing number of outlets for the publication of evolutionary research. In addition, innovations to meetings as a result of the pandemic present an opportunity to expand the scope of our meeting by carrying forward successful on-line elements. We also have the opportunity to employ new formats to help us engage more members when we meet in person. I will work with the organizers to keep the Evolution meeting a forward-looking and open venue with a variety of platforms for sharing science.
SSE is a vibrant scientific society with a strong membership, journal, annual meeting and an active, engaged early-career community. As President, I will work to maintain and expand upon these strengths by undertaking initiatives to position SSE as a “must join” society for evolutionary biologists across a broadening field, and by making sure we are a welcoming professional community for an increasingly diverse group of scientists.
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Emília P. Martins, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
I am honored to have been nominated to serve as President of the SSE. I first joined SSE as a graduate student nearly 30 years ago, when I published my first paper in Evolution and attended the first of many SSE conferences. Since then, I’ve also served once on the SSE Council and twice on the Evolution editorial board. With each of these and many more interactions, I’ve benefited tremendously from SSE’s historic goal of crossing disciplinary barriers and bringing together diverse perspectives. I’m ready now to help ensure that SSE continues that tradition into the future.
If elected, my primary goal will be to help SSE develop initiatives that engage and foster the careers of a more diverse community of evolutionary biologists, including especially Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and other people of color from around the world. I am deeply and personally committed to increasing diversity in the sciences, and over the years, have designed and directed several initiatives to broaden participation. I am pleased that SSE has taken recent steps towards equity and inclusion, building on the long-standing UDE program with a new diversity committee, awards, and financial priorities. However, much work remains to be done. We need to listen actively to diverse voices, to educate ourselves about racism in the history of evolutionary biology, and to take decisive action to correct the damage. We need to set tangible goals, and to put reliable systems for assessing progress into place.
These are challenging times, and evolutionary biologists are uniquely positioned to contribute to global discussions on health disparities, evolving pathogens, genetic manipulation, climate change, and biodiversity. In addition to maintaining an outstanding journal, building community, and fostering the careers of its junior members, SSE has an opportunity to play a leadership role in shaping future visions and policies. I welcome an opportunity to participate in this effort, especially in strengthening links to other societies and agencies. Together, we can do much more than we can alone.
