President-Elect

 
Victoria Sork, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Institute of the Environment, University of California Los Angeles

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It is an extreme honor to be nominated to serve as President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, a society that is about to observe its 75th Anniversary. Its title captures its mission and its journal published high quality articles in all areas of evolutionary biology. Early in my career, I decided that this society offered me the scientific identity that underlies my research in plant conservation, evolutionary ecology, and evolutionary genomics. Its annual meetings are the ones where I felt the most community, and its council members, executives, and presidents have included my closest colleagues and friends. The society governance has always been effective in advancing excellence in research evidenced by high quality journals and annual meetings and expanding membership. Over the years, the role of the President has expanded from a focus on scientific leadership to one of social responsibility. Like other areas of the academia, especially in the sciences, the demographic composition of our community does not represent that of society and I am proud that SSE is engaged in an agenda of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It is equally important that SSE leadership join other societies to participate in public discourse on the social crises of our day, such as rapid climate change, spread of endemic diseases, and loss of biodiversity. Somehow, we need to play a role in enhancing public respect for science-based policies around these and other issues where evolutionary insight is so central. The next President of SSE must be committed to these challenges, and I would be privileged to assume that responsibility.

As SSE President, I would prioritize three areas. First, the society has many ongoing activities and standing committees. I would engage with these efforts to ensure that we are making progress. In particular, I would review the editorial priorities for the journals and the breadth of high-quality papers but represents both the emerging areas of evolutionary biology and also those provide the scientific evidence for addressing societal problems where evolutionary insight will enhance public policy. Second, I would review the recently established DEI activities to assess their effectiveness and explore new practices to enhance the demographic composition of evolutionary biologist in academic and other professional careers. Third, I would work with leadership in other evolutionary and biological professional society to promote the use of evolutionary biology in the development of public policy and public discourse. The anti-intellectual attitudes of a significant portion of our society and leadership has undermined our effectiveness in reducing the human causes of climate change and the spread of COVID19. In addition, I would also utilize the networks of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to promote SSE’s contribution to Professional societies must collaborate with other professional societies that are lobbying for evidence-based policies as well as funding for evolutionary research that provides the foundations for understanding nature and its conservation.

During my career, I have benefitted from many experiences that I would bring to the position. In the past, I served on the editorial board of Evolution, was Treasurer for the American Society of Naturalist, and participated in numerous NSF review panels. I am a Senior Associate Editor for Molecular Ecology and editor for Molecular Biology and Evolution. My current research integrates landscape and evolutionary genomics with quantitative genetics of phenotypic traits to understand how local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity shape response of oak populations to rapidly warming climates. This research has let to my concern about evolutionary applications and science policy. As Dean of Life Sciences at UCLA for eleven years, I led several successful initiatives to promote diversity and equity and build inclusive classrooms. During this time, the number and percent of African-American and Latinx undergraduate biology majors, bioscience graduate students, and life science faculty has increased significantly at UCLA. As a fundraiser, I have learned communication skills needed to articulate the societal impact of biological research. Realizing that everyone nominated for leadership positions at SSE has a unique set of experiences that will advance the goals of SSE, I have humbly accepted this nomination in the event that my particular background would be helpful at this time when our professional societies must engender an agenda of social engagement as well as academic excellence.

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Kelly R. Zamudio, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin

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I am honored to be considered for the Presidency of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). The SSE serves an engaged and highly active group of researchers and educators, and I would be proud to serve this community. More than ever, scientific societies play vital roles in supporting research communities, promoting and streamlining inclusive participation in science, and in publicizing the importance of science to society at large.

• Promoting Advancement of Evolutionary Biology. One of my main goals as SSE president will be to continue and innovate the strong traditions that promote and enhance our research and our voice in the life sciences, with particular attention to inviting and encouraging ECR to engage in our governance and consider leadership positions in the future. The SSE has taken an active role in supporting early-career scientists by awarding grants to our graduate student members and providing other forms of networking and professional development. What I perceive as missing is the engagement of enlisting of early career scientists in their last years of post-docs and first years as assistant professors. We obviously do not want to burden ECRs with heavy service, but bringing them into positions on councils or committees impacts career trajectories in our community, and also helps diversify voices and opinions in our governing body. As SSE President, I will work to develop ways in which the Society can expand and broaden its support for ECR and advocate for a more direct pipeline that includes them in governance and decision-making.

• Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusivity. We have made progress in our efforts to diversify our societies but we still have a lot of work to do to make opportunities in our field truly inclusive and equitable. The SSE has begun this important work, hosting workshops and activities to inform members and give voice to marginalized groups, developing best practices for award nomination and selection processes, and establishing codes of conduct to make the annual Evolution meetings safer and more inclusive. As President, I will work to center inclusion and equity in SSE’s activities. Specifically, I am interested in developing consortia with other societies, such as organismal biology focused societies, to design pathways that might encourage individuals to consider careers in organismal evolutionary biology, and bring new diverse members to our field.

• Increasing the relevance of evolutionary biology to society at large. One thing that COVID-19 pandemic has made clear to us is that we live in a country in crisis when it comes to scientific literacy. There is clear opportunity for our society to expand its reach by encouraging and fostering good science communication. Many of our members are already active in science communication through Twitter accounts, personal blogs, writings for public outlets, and other avenues, promoting and publicizing evolutionary biology. I think we can increase our impact in this area and become an even more powerful force in educating non-scientists on the social importance of evolutionary biology. One of my goals is to identify a role for the Society in further publicizing these efforts, and in supporting the work of our creative science educators.

My past service provides me with the experience and skills to effectively work toward these goals in SSE. My previous professional service has included serving as a Program Officer at NSF, where I helped with granting in the Systematics and Biodiversity Cluster, but also work on programmatic efforts to enhance funding in interdisciplinary and international research. The NSF has re-doubled their efforts in promoting cultural change in academia through societies – and this is an excellent time to be thinking about big ways in which SSE can make that difference. I also currently serve as the President of the American Genetic Association (AGA) and have served on its Council. I served on the AGA EECG Research Awards committee (awarded to graduate students and postdocs), and on the AGA DEI committee, and I am currently organizing the President’s Symposium for 2021. Additionally, I have a long history of actively supporting diversity and inclusion efforts. I have dedicated much of my service effort toward improving our workplaces and increasing opportunities for a diverse community. In 2017 the three evolution societies founded the Code of Conduct Committee, and as a founding member, I helped produce a set of standards and response procedures that now have been vetted by society leadership and implemented at annual meetings. We now have a series of events, outreach, and explicit norms and expectations all aimed at making our meetings welcoming to all attendees. I also served on the DEI committee of the Society for Systematic Biologists (SSB) and was the SSB representative to the Joint Meeting Council that oversees decisions about our joint annual meetings and policies/procedures implemented there.

As a long-time member of SSE, I would be most honored to use these experiences and skills in service to our society. Thank you for your consideration.

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Non-North American Vice President

 
Hanna Kokko,Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland

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I felt very honored when I was asked to consider running for the role of the non-North American Vice President in the 2021 elections of the SSE. It feels a particularly important year to consider this role, as the pandemic challenges have made researchers much more sedentary when it comes to international travel — on the other hand, we are getting used to connecting via means that have already existed for a long time, but somehow never felt like the default option until now. I can imagine that the role of a person who does not reside in North America (and has actually never done so, but has nevertheless acquired a lot of scientific friends on that continent) would be to strengthen the global aspect of the SSE.

There are obviously other aspects to a role like that, and bringing in a (partial) ‘outsider’ view. There’s tremendous and welcome emphasis on diversity in our field at the moment, and I could very well bring in expertise that I have gained both as a supervisor and in my various roles in grant funding agencies such as the European Research Council (until 2017, including being the panel chair towards the end of my 8-year period there) and the Swiss National Council, where right now changes and discussions are taking place to ensure that evaluation of scientific careers in competitive settings are as fair and balanced as possible.
One could also extend the relevant discussions to how science might value different topics and approaches, e.g., by having a good healthy discussion of the role of long-term data collection, best open science practices, and taxonomic diversity in our study choices (I have published on these topics, see references below). Generally, what I love about evolutionary biology is that it combines the appreciation of unity of all life – there are processes that take place in every cell, and every life cycle, and can be best understood with model organisms – with an astonishing capacity of evolution to produce diversity. It would be great if our scientific approaches could, when viewed as a whole, embrace these different aspects of what we could study.

Kokko, H. 2017. Give one species the task to come up with a theory that spans them all: what good can come out of that? Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 284: 20171652.
Meirmans, S., Butlin, R.K., Charmantier, A., Engelstädter, J., Groot, A., King, K.C., Kokko, H., Reid, J.M. & Neiman, M. 2019. Science policies: How should science funding be allocated? An evolutionary biologists’ perspective. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 32: 754-768.

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Enrico Rezende, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

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With regards to my priorities and how I may contribute to the SSE as non-North American Vice President, I believe the main contribution would be integration at several levels:

1. Across disciplines - I am originally an animal physiologist with a strong background in evolutionary biology, that currently integrates empirical, comparative and theoretical approaches to study evolutionary questions ranging from phylogenetic effects in pollination networks, to the evolution of endothermy in the dinosaur lineage leading to birds or the strength of thermal selection in natural populations with ongoing global warming.

2. Across regions/cultures - I pursued my academic career in five different countries (Chile, Brazil, USA, Spain and UK) and am quite familiar with multiple research groups working in ecology and evolutionary biology across Latin America, North America and Europe. Importantly, I was involved in the VI Escuela Latinoamericana de Evolución (ELAEVO), a two-week workshop for Latin American graduate students on different subjects in evolutionary biology (program here). This initiative started in 2009 and I was supposed to organize the ELAEVO in 2021, but this was not possible due to the pandemic.

3. Across societies - I currently work as Senior Editor for Functional Ecology, and have very close ties with the British Ecological Society and their respective scientific journals.

Overall, my impression is that I can contribute with the SSE by establishing a communication bridge with Latin America and, hopefully, by providing a valuable role model and high standards of excellence for young Latin American researchers. Being able to bring international researchers to do field work in South America would also be crucial to improve the quality of the education of young researchers. Finally, stronger academic voices are currently needed in South America given the current political scenario (e.g., last year I helped remove one of Bolsonaro's Minister of Education following a plagiarism scandal, links in the CV), and the association with the SSE provides a degree of respectability that may be important for the general public and/or policymakers around here.

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Treasurer

 
Courtney J. Murren, Department of Biology, College of Charleston

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I am honored to have been nominated for the Treasurer position at the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). As a non-profit organization, the Society for the Study of Evolution can effect change and provide leadership in science through connecting members across institutions and organizations that vary in their emphasis in research, education and outreach. 

I am interested in serving as SSE Treasurer, as I have experience serving on campus faculty-senate budget and compensation committees at my public institution. I contributed to evaluation of policy and assessed how budgets align with overall institution strategic plans. I have also had the privilege to serve on committees for the annual Evolution conference and the liaison committee for American Society of Naturalists. Both committees included budgetary aspects and budget parameters contributed to decision making. Budgets reflect many aspects of institutional mission and provide opportunities for evaluation of organization priorities as well as to institute change in accordance with the mission. 

The SSE Treasurer position is an opportunity to give back to my professional society. This includes contributing to organization health by following SSE financial policies and procedures, and by reporting on budget activities and their alignment with SSE strategic goals. This also includes expanding ongoing efforts of the society by developing budget policies furthering support for students and early-career scholars, and by furthering activities that enhance inclusive, diverse, and climate-informed actions. Finally, I would maintain responsible financial stewardship established by prior society officers. 

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Councilors

 
Robin M. Tinghitella, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Denver

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I am delighted to be nominated to serve as a Council Member for the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). Professional societies play a pivotal role in career development and advancement, help us to communicate and publicize important work and its policy implications, and promote connection and collaboration among diverse groups of scientists. I am pleased to say that the SSE has felt like home to me throughout my career, as I’ve attended meetings to share my own work as a graduate student, postdoc, and now a faculty member and mentor. I would be honored to give back to a society that has shown its continued support of early career researchers and commitment to inclusivity and equity. As a member of the Council, I would love to work with and learn from SSE officers and committee members, especially the Graduate Student Advisory Committee, the Education and Outreach Committee, the Diversity Committee, the International Committee, and others. My experiences as a student at a primarily undergraduate institution and as a faculty member at the University of Denver (DU) will allow me to share the perspectives of and advocate for society members who are from less established research universities and programs, but still do awesome things for our field.

As a member of the SSE Council, I would be particularly interested in continuing to expand the successful work being done to foster the careers of budding evolutionary biologists and to promote justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in evolutionary biology. For me, personally, the most impactful SSE programs have been SAFE Evolution, the Story Collider events, the small grant programs for graduate students, and the Undergraduate Diversity at Evolution program. As part of the SSE Council, I will work to develop ways in which the Society can expand and broaden its support for early career scientists, for instance through peer-to-peer mentorship programs for graduate students, postdocs (who unfortunately often fall through the cracks!), and early faculty. I will also advocate for society-wide initiatives that will improve climate for marginalized groups in evolutionary biology. I would like to see the SSE continue to center accessibility and inclusivity in all discussions. For instance, while I’ve desperately missed seeing friends and colleagues at in-person meetings over the last two years, it seems there is something important we can learn about accessibility from the increased international and student participation at the recent Virtual Evolution meetings. Finally, I am passionate about science communication and recently founded a science communication program aimed specifically at broadening participation. For our work to make a difference at national and global levels we need to foster an early interest in effective science communication and to provide a platform for early career scientists to engage with policy makers and educators. As a Council member I would be interested in finding ways to foster science communication training and practice at Evolution meetings and in offering opportunities for students to share their work with diverse types of audiences.

What qualifications will help me make a meaningful contribution to the SSE?

Contributions to Professional Societies: Over the years I have enjoyed contributing to my academic societies by serving as an Associate Editor for two society journals (including Evolution), volunteering as a mentor for undergraduate and graduate students at meetings, judging student talks and posters (including for the SSE’s W. D. Hamilton Award), reviewing graduate student grants, organizing symposia, and serving on scientific advisory committees. My own lab has benefited immensely from awards like the RC Lewontin Early Award, the Rosemary Grant Award, and Small Grants for Local and Regional Outreach offered through SSE.

Leadership and Service: My primary leadership positions as a faculty member have focused on undergraduate/graduate education, mentorship, and JEDI issues. I served on our Graduate Committee from 2014-19 and Undergraduate Honors Committee from 2014-16, becoming chair of this committee in January 2019. In 2017 I was also elected to the university’s Honors Council. I recently became an inaugural member of DU’s Equity and Racial Justice committee and was one of five hand-picked faculty on a committee charged with developing DU’s first ever faculty mentorship program.

JEDI: My commitment to justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in life and work is evident in all major areas of my CV: professional appointments, funding, publications, teaching, mentorship, and service and community engagement. I have worked extensively in K-12 classrooms (see Science Education below), sought numerous opportunities to mentor minoritized students through programs like NSMentoring, DU Day of Action, and the E-STEM program of the Colorado-Wyoming Alliance for Minority Participation, co-founded a free summer camp for low-income and minoritized middle school girls, secured NSF funding to support attendance of 20 diverse early-career scientists at an international meeting, mentored a postdoctoral researcher whose work focused exclusively on inequity in STEM, contributed to the writing of a funded ADVANCE grant, and founded a science communication program aimed explicitly at broadening participation in the sciences.

Science Education: As a postdoc, I was project manager for two NSF Graduate Fellows in K-12 Research grants at Michigan State University. Both programs paired graduate students with teachers and K-12 students at underserved rural schools to provide K-12 students with authentic science experiences and improve science communication and teaching skills of graduate student Fellows. These years instilled a strong commitment to science communication as an avenue to engage with my community and exposed me to severe inequities in access to STEM education. Since then, I have continued science education work by publishing case studies and Data Nuggets for use in ecology and evolution courses, establishing an interinstitutional CURE based on my research on the evolution of animal communication (see Ingley et al. in press), and researching how girls’ interest in careers in STEM, perception of science, and scientific self-efficacy are impacted by informal STEM experiences.

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Noah K. Whiteman, Department of Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley

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I am honored to be running for the Council of the Society for the Study of Evolution, a society that has played a fundamental role in shaping me as a scientist. The long-standing policy of the SSE that all meeting attendees, including students, are able to have a speaking slot is an example of why it holds such an important place in my scientific heart. Giving junior researchers a voice is the best way to encourage interest in our field and create long-term bonds to the society.

My research group at UC-Berkeley follows from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, who focused on the evolution of new traits shaped by ecological interactions between organisms, whether within or between species. Such interactions are an evolutionary crucible in which new adaptations are forged, increasing the fitness of their bearers. Species interactions can also drive the evolution of reproductive isolation, resulting in the origin of new species. Lately, our work has tended to focus on understanding how toxins mediate species interactions—specifically, how toxins evolve, how they are perceived, resisted and even co-opted by animals. Toxins of biological origin can become keystone molecules, supporting the evolution and integration of diverse phenotypic modules in animals. The evolution of toxicity transforms animals from cryptic to conspicuous, nocturnal to diurnal, small to big, fast to slow, solitary to social, local to widespread, neglectful to doting parents and short- to long-lived. But toxicity is not only restricted to gaudy animals. A parallel transformation unfolded as cells of the animal immune system became armed with an arsenal of novel toxins that we also study.

I was raised deep in the Sax-Zim bog of northern Minnesota, not far from the tiny Finnish township of Toivola, on the “Arctic Riviera.” I attended a K-12 public school with 125 other students in a district spanning hundreds of square miles. I then went to a small college in Minnesota and worked on co-evolutionary genetics of Galápagos hawks and their parasites for my dissertation research with Professor Patricia Parker in St. Louis. I was trained in genomics and molecular biology with Professors Naomi Pierce and Fred Ausubel at Harvard as an NIH NRSA postdoc. Once there, I began to develop a genomic model herbivore of Arabidopsis—a drosophilid fly called Scaptomyza flava that I found in a park living in wild mustards. We continue to study how these flies have adapted to feeding on these mustard oil-bearing plants.

I am running for the SSE Council position because, in addition to all of the exciting science the society supports, I see an opportunity to give back to an organization that I believe has been on the forefront of making biology a more inclusive space. SSE has been a leader in transforming itself into a more equitable and diverse scientific society. Over the past three years, I have been working closely with Genetics Society of America as the first Chair of the GSA Equity and Inclusion (E&I) Committee. As my term comes to an end on that committee, I am excited about the potential to transfer my skills and knowledge to SSE. As part of a new program created by the GSA’s E&I Committee, we recently invited our first cohort of Presidential Members, most of whom will be linked up with the Early Career Leadership Program. The goal is to wholeheartedly welcome and provide career support for junior scientists from historically excluded backgrounds. From grappling with the history of eugenics in our field to the challenges minoritized scientists face at all levels of the academic hierarchy, we have our work cut out for us. I would be very excited to help implement and support similar membership efforts at SSE.

Why am I so passionate about inclusion? I was the first out LGBTQIA+ tenured faculty member in my department at the University of Arizona and the same is true in my home department at the University of California, Berkeley. This may be a little surprising to you—but it isn’t to me. The data show that LGBTQIA+ drop out of STEM majors at higher rates while undergrads. The reasons are manifold, but role modeling is known to help these scientists stay the course. Academia has given me an amazing life. I share here details of my journey simply to provide hope for those who might be able to relate to some aspects of it. It isn't necessarily fun to talk about some of these things. But role models were very important to me as a budding scientist. We need more of them. And if elected to the SSE Council, I hope to continue to be a role model for LGBTQIA+ and first-generation scientists in our community.

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Christopher N. Balakrishnan, Department of Biology, East Carolina University

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I am honored to have been nominated for the Council of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). I have been a member of the SSE since graduate school and the society has been central to my development as a scientist. At the same time, early in my career I found academic societies difficult to navigate, with somewhat cryptic inner-workings. With this perspective, as a council member I would look forward to cultivating an SSE that continues to support and welcome the next generation of evolutionary biologists.

The covid19 pandemic has caused massive global suffering and the full scope of the impacts won’t be known for some time. The pandemic has, however, uniquely placed evolutionary biology in the public eye. Throughout my career I have sought to improve the public understanding of evolution and science more broadly. As a member of SSE Council I would strive to develop new ways for the society to connect with the public and to amplify the benefits of a robust public understanding of evolutionary biology. As a graduate student, I founded Nerd Nite, now an international series of light-hearted and somewhat irreverent lectures on science and other topics. While I recognize the limitations of Nerd Nite (and other similar events) in terms of the types of audiences they reach, I place an emphasis on thinking creatively about how we can remove barriers to public engagement with evolutionary science.

Over the last two years I have served the evolutionary biology community as a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation. In this position I have had the opportunity to think deeply about the challenges and opportunities for our discipline. During a time of reckoning for the academic community and society at large, it has been inspiring to try to develop new programs to foster a more equitable evolutionary biology and think about how our science can engage a broader community. I have served on Diversity & Inclusion committees at the NSF, my home institution, East Carolina University, and my other primary academic society, the American Ornithological Society. I’d look forward to bringing this experience with me to the council of the SSE.

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Regina S. Baucom, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, University of Michigan

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I am honored to be nominated for the Society for the Study of Evolution council. I am a long time member of SSE and am deeply appreciative of the role that the society has played during the development of my career as well as the cornerstone role the society plays in the promotion and support of evolutionary research more broadly. The Society for the Study of Evolution has long supported fantastic evolutionary biologists across a variety of subdisciplines, and I am excited by the prospect of serving this community.

The support and promotion of evolutionary biology during extraordinary times. The covid19 pandemic has dealt unparalleled stress to researchers of every career stage but especially to junior scientists. As a community we have experienced dramatic reductions in access to our study sites, our labs, and in the very important day-to-day interactions with other scientists and students. The last year was marked by loss, stress, political strife in the US, and clear and horrible examples of the outright racism that Black and Brown scientists endure. As a community we will need to think very strategically on how best to support scientists that have been especially impacted by the pandemic and social inequities. I am particularly interested in developing mechanisms that will act to retain women in the field who may have shouldered additional care responsibilities in the last year, and scientists from minority backgrounds who may have experienced great losses and extreme stress from pandemic-related events. I am also deeply concerned about the effect that a lack of early formative research experiences may have on undergraduates, especially those from PUIs. As a council member I will think very carefully about how to maintain and promote the study of evolution for everyone while also working to provide access and support for researchers most affected by covid19.

Every stress and problem, however, presents opportunity. The covid19 pandemic provides a highly relevant axis upon which evolutionary biologists can communicate and promote the study of evolution. Whereas the acceptance of evolution by the public is crucial for basic scientific literacy, the recent pandemic provides evolutionary biologists a vehicle through which we can promote our science more generally. As a council member I will support outreach to the public as well as primary and secondary school systems on general evolutionary themes but likewise see a unique role that the society can play in communicating evolutionary science specific to the pandemic.

Promoting equity, inclusion, and justice in the society. SSE has responded in a remarkable way in recent years in efforts to promote and retain scientists from diverse backgrounds. The society enacted initiatives aimed to make meetings a safe place for everyone, and in the last year has made important initial steps to recognize how the historical support of eugenics among notable evolutionary biologists affects who feels welcome in the community. There is still much work to be done, especially with regards to attracting and retaining Black and Brown scientists, supporting members from the global south, and in engineering a climate that feels supportive, welcoming, and comfortable for POC, LGBTQIA, and disabled scientists. As a council member I will center BIPOC voices while continuing to push the evolution community to address structural and societal barriers that influence who enters the field, and additionally who feels most supported and appreciated.

I bring a strong record of society service and past initiatives that have helped to shift the evolution community into a more diverse, just, inclusive, and equitable society. I am the co-creator and maintainer of DiversifyEEB, which is a public list highlighting ecologists and evolutionary biologists who are women and/or underrepresented minorities. The list, begun by myself and Meghan Duffy in 2014, is used by symposium organizers, award and search committees, among others, to identify ecologists and evolutionary biologists who might diversify their candidate pools. Notably, the list was previously used to diversify the pool of associate editors serving the Evolution journal. Additionally, I served as the first chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee for the American Society of Naturalists in 2018/2019, and served in the capacity of a committee member from 2019-2021. During this time, I helped develop Safe Evolution (including the meeting Code of Conduct) for the tri-societies (SSE, SSB, ASN), to ensure our meetings are a welcoming and safe atmosphere for all attendees. I also played a key role in bringing the Story Collider to the meetings, and additionally proposed the idea for a society diversity, equity, and inclusion award, which developed into the tri-society IDEA (Inclusiveness, Diversity, Equity, Access) award. I am currently a council member for the American Genetics Association and in this capacity have served on the bylaws committee as well as chair for the EECG Research Awards committee, which are research funds awarded to graduate students and postdocs.

As a long-time member of the Society for the Study of Evolution, I would be thrilled to serve on council and in so doing would focus on ways to strengthen and maintain the study of evolution, especially in the context of current and future stresses stemming from the covid19 pandemic. Thank you for your consideration.

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Daniel I. Bolnick, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut

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The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) plays an essential role in facilitating scientific research, inclusive education and career building, and public outreach. I am eager for the chance to serve the society, and the diverse community that it represents, in facilitating these goals. Below, I outline some ideas for how I might serve these goals, and my qualifications for the position.

Promoting research. The SSE already plays key roles in promoting innovative research. The society advocates for federal funding of evolution, and provides its own grants to support early-career scientists (graduate students). It creates spaces for scientists to disseminate their findings at the annual conferences, and through publication in Evolution and affiliated journals. Maintaining these excellent services is a core function of the society. However, there is always room for improvement:

Research ethics training is often left to individual faculty, and often missing from undergraduate and graduate curricula. Some recent high-profile cases of research misconduct in data collection, data archiving, and publishing have highlighted the grave consequences of ethical lapses for the community as a whole. The society, as both a funder and publisher of research, has the opportunity to take a leading role in promoting more extensive and effective education about research ethics. If I were elected to the council, I would make it my priority to establish a program to promote training in research ethics in organismal biology, through conference events or virtual classes made available globally.

Research funding is perpetually a limiting resource, especially after the elimination of the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants (DDIG). I would like to serve as an advocate to the NSF for either restoration of the DDIG, or creative alternative strategies to fill that vital means of supporting graduate student innovation. Increased research funding and salary for undergraduates is also a key to drawing a diverse pool of students into evolutionary science.

Inclusive education and career building. The field of evolutionary biology has a grim history, with its deep connections to eugenics and biological racism. The SSE has made great strides in recent years to counter this legacy, including concrete steps to make its conferences safer and more welcoming (e.g., training of EvoAllies, a role I’ve served at each Evolution and ASN conference since the program began), the outstanding Story Collider series at the meetings, and mentoring programs for minority students at the meetings. There are many paths the society can take to move further in these directions.

One that I am especially passionate about, is making the annual conferences more accessible to a broader array of participants. These meetings are a crucial venue for networking for jobs, and learning about cutting-edge intellectual trends in the field. But, many researchers are cut out of participating due to the cost of attendance, compounded by geographical distance. This exclusion is most severe for individuals with limited funding for travel, or family obligations, who are most likely to be from historically excluded groups or nations. To be inclusive, we need to be creative about rethinking conferences using the lessons learned from the COVID pandemic, to create hybrid models that offer both irreplaceable in-person interactions, and the opportunity for non-attendees to still participate.

Another goal is to use conferences and society-sponsored workshops to promote a more expansive vision of the range of career trajectories. We are a predominantly academic society attended mostly by students and university faculty. Yet, evolutionary biology touches on many applied topics ranging from agriculture to medicine to conservation. Without losing sight of our core goal of research advances, we can do a better job of encouraging a wider array of career paths at our conferences and helping our members learn about and pursue those paths.

Public outreach. Anti-science sentiment is widespread today, and presents a major barrier to sound public policy to deal with many crises that we face today, whether climate change or emerging infectious diseases. Evolution has long been a target of anti-science activists, and our collective experience and lessons learned from this history can be applied to more effectively address anti-science sentiment more broadly. It is crucial that SSE and the individual scientists it represents take a strong stance in advocating for better science education from grade-school through college, and public outreach through media and entertainment. We must engage with influencers and policy makers to address misconceptions, allay concerns, and promote understanding and appreciation of the value of science broadly. Doing this effectively means thinking beyond the bounds of evolutionary biology alone, and establishing collaborative programs with other scientific disciplines facing related challenges.

I first joined the SSE shortly after graduating from college, while I was an education volunteer for the US Peace Corps in Tanzania (1996-98). While there I read every issue of Evolution that made its way to my mailbox, cover to cover. I’ve been a member ever since, and became a prepaid lifetime member about five years ago. I’ve published more articles in Evolution than any other journal (yes, much more even than The American Naturalist). But although I’ve been a devoted member of the society, I’ve devoted far more service to The American Society of Naturalists over the years. I’ve served SSE as an Associate Editor briefly (pausing to serve as Editor of The American Naturalist), and have been trained and served as an EvoAlly at the Evolution meetings. In contrast, I’ve served the ASN extensively as Associate Editor from 2008-2018, Secretary from 2010-2012, Past secretary from 2013-2015, organizer of the first ASN Asilomar meeting in 2014, and Editor-In-Chief from 2018-2022. This service to ASN has frequently brought me into contact with both the SSE council and Evolution’s editorial board, at joint council meetings and other events almost every year for over a decade. But until now I’ve been there to represent ASN. As my term as Editor of The American Naturalist winds down, I am eager to have the opportunity to serve the SSE.

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Angélica Cibrián-Jaramillo, Ecological and Evolutionary Biology Lab, LANGEBIO, CINVESTAV, Mexico

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I felt greatly honored when I received the invitation to participate as a candidate for the
Council of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). I was also immediately reminded of the strength and solidarity of the SSE academic community. Even in one of the most complicated and challenging years of our generation, the SSE moves forward despite a pandemic, and continues to strengthen the academic community interested in advancing evolutionary studies. As an evolutionary biologist by training and by self-recognition, I am thrilled for the possibility of contributing to advance knowledge in evolution-related research via my Council duties. There is no doubt that the SSE has an exceptional history in this effort. It provides support to scientists in their early formative years as PhD candidates and throughout their trajectory, including early-career scientists. The various awards given by the SSE have significant and positive impact in the trajectories of evolution scholars worldwide and are recognized by all of us even as early and wide-eyed graduate students, as greatly important. As an early scholar (Fulbright and others) from my native Mexico to conduct evolutionary studies at Columbia University, I know that support during graduate school can go a long way.

If elected as a member of the Council, I would support the SSE in favoring education and training that provide early exposure to on-the-ground fieldwork, and hands-on laboratory and bioinformatic work. Early exposure at the undergraduate level and as early as middle school, is critical to build a scientific mind frame and facilitate a deeper understanding of the methods that are used in evolutionary research studies. This is even more important in marginalized academic environments. I have trained and graduated Master and PhD students, and undergrads and high-school students that earned nationallevel recognition in the US.

In terms of early training, in Mexico I headed an effort to incorporate middle school teenagers in understanding how the scientific method is carried out by organizing a lab-based experience. followed by the review process of scientific papers in evolutionary topics that were submitted by established Mexican scientists. The collection of reviewed papers was later published as a special issue in an international journal and kids were able to see their effort in contributing to evolutionary studies. As part of the Tiny-Earth project in the US, and other smaller efforts to incorporate scientific and evolutionary thinking in youth that I participate in, I have learned that a fun, cooperative, hands-on experience is perhaps the best conduit to advance scientific learning over time, and would bring that in my duties in the Council.

In terms of promoting diversity, I would build from my own experience as a Latin- American woman of color who carried out her own research in a welcoming multicultural environment while based in the US. I will promote and advocate for mechanisms that recognize and support bright enthusiastic scholars of diverse backgrounds and institutions. Embedded in each person’s own language and culture is a different and complementary interpretation of nature. A community with a diverse cultural background will therefore result in multiple views of the evolutionary history of organisms and the phenomena that leads to that history. This can only lead to novel scientific discoveries that cannot take place in the absence of diversity. In return, underrepresented peoples’ scientific trajectories can change significantly with the support of, and inclusion in, a research community like the one in SSE. I am grateful to SSE for inviting me to participate as a candidate for the Council, adding to an already diverse society.

I am passionate about changing academia to eliminate and prevent gender violence. I am currently working with an international group of researchers (led by Mandë Holford, CUNY-NYC) to promote and protect women and minorities in STEM. I have begun working on raising awareness in all members of our academic community in my home institution of the great loss to all, when women are marginalized, excluded, or suffer violence within academia. I would hope to continue to promote safe academic spaces for women and change negative gender roles, as a member of the Council.

The recurrent challenge for us evolutionary biologists is that of transmitting the value of evolutionary thinking to society. The COVID19 pandemic has brought evolutionary thought and tools forward into the public light, in particular the relevance of molecular biology and genomics of the Sars-Cov2 virus. Today we have a very interesting and powerful window of opportunity as the conversations about the evolution of genomic variants in a virus leave the halls of academia and enter people’s homes. In 2020, I placed most of my research lines on hold and devoted the entire year to describe the evolutionary genomics of Sars-Cov2 in Mexico to my peers, friends, and neighbors. I had a first-hand experience of emergency outreach of evolution via social media, in seminars, and in person. With more time and planning through the SSE, such efforts jointly with the SSE experience, can become an important component of outreach for evolutionary thinking.

My current and previous professional services in collection-based institutions focused on research and outreach, and my experience coordinating various interdisciplinary international consortia. My work during a decade based in Mexico, and now temporarily based in the Netherlands, have given me enough skills and insight to be able to conduct my duties as a member of the Council Class and service our Society.

I thank you in advance for your consideration, and I would be happy to answer any additional questions or doubts that you may have.

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