LATEST NEWS » Awards & Grants

Congratulations to the recipient of the 2024 IDEA Award, Dr. Jeremy Yoder! 

The Inclusiveness, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Award is presented by the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Society of Systematic Biologists. Dr. Yoder was selected for his foundational work recognizing, celebrating, and promoting the inclusion of LGBTQ+ professionals in STEM fields. In 2013, he spearheaded a large-scale study with the nonprofit Out to Innovate to survey more than 1,400 LGBTQA researchers around the world about their experiences in STEM fields. This work produced three papers which together have been cited almost 300 times, have inspired new projects and research, and are used as educational resources. Yoder has presented seminars on inclusion on LGBTQ inclusion and experiences in STEM, and served on panels to review policies for the advancement of LGBTQ+ people in STEM careers. In 2024, he spoke about his career studying Joshua trees in the Story Collider event at the annual Evolution meeting, where he previously helped organize LGBTQ+ meetups and mixers for several years. Learn more about his work on his lab website.

Dr. Yoder will present his work during the IDEA Award Plenary at the in-person portion of the Evolution 2025 meeting in Athens, GA in June.

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is now accepting proposals for the Small Grants Program for Local and Regional Outreach Promoting the Understanding of Evolutionary Biology. 

These grants provide support for local and regional educational outreach activities to take place during 2025. Examples of past outreach activities have included public lectures, exhibits, student competitions, and professional development events for teachers.

Grants of up to $1000 USD will be awarded. Applicants must be members of SSE. 

Learn more and apply by  March 1, 2025. 

Applications are now open for the 2025 International Travel Stipends, which provide funding to attend the Evolution 2025 meeting or the ESEB 2025 Congress in person. Recipients receive meeting registration and funds for transportation to the conference, meals, and lodging. All career stages are eligible, and preference will be given to students and early-career researchers. 

Check your eligibility and apply by January 31.

The SSE International Committee is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024 International Event Grants! The goal of these grants is to foster communication and collaboration between scientists from different countries by sponsoring international symposia, workshops, courses, and other events within the field of evolutionary biology. 

2024 Recipients:

Event: Meeting on the Origins and Evolution of Multicellularity Across the Tree of Life

Organizers: Victoria Shabardina (Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona, Spain —IBE, CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain), Marta Álvarez-Presas (IBE), Koryu Kin (Juntendo University, Japan), Guifré Torruella (IBE), Aurora Nedelcu (University of New Brunswick, Canada), Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (IBE)
Dates: October 9-11, 2025
Location: Barcelona, Spain


Event: Evolutionary Genomics Workshop – Colombia 2024

Organizers: Catalina Palacios (SELVA: Research for the conservation in the neotropics, Colombia), Daniel Cadena (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), Camila Gómez (SELVA: Research for the conservation in the neotropics, Colombia), Leonardo Campagna (Cornell University, USA)
Dates: Late 2024 (exact dates TBD)
Location: Bogotá, Santa Marta, and Chiquinquirá, Colombia


Event: RADcamp-Latin America 2025: Robust and reproducible library preparation, sequencing, assembly, and analysis of RADseq datasets

Organizers: RADCamp workshop team (USA) and CoreLab Genomics team (Tecnológico de Monterrey, México)
Dates: July 14-21, 2025
Location: Monterrey, México


Event: Fifth International Southeast Asian Bat Conference (SEABCO 2024)

Organizers: Long Vu (Center for Biodiversity Conservation and Endangered Species—CBES) and Laurel Yohe (UNC Charlotte, USA)
Dates: November 26-30, 2024
Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Applications are now open for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants (GREG) - R. C. Lewontin Early Awards, which provide up to $2,500 USD in research funds for students in the early stages of their PhD or Master’s programs. Applicants must be members of SSE. Full eligibility requirements, evaluation criteria, and proposal instructions are available here. 

Deadline: February 19

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is pleased to announce the call for applications for the 2025 T. H. Huxley award, named in honor of Darwin's very public supporter, which recognizes and promotes the development of high-quality evolution education resources. If you have an interesting project or educational activity to share, consider applying for this award. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are encouraged to apply. 

This award provides funding for an SSE member to present evolution education resources at an education-focused session or conference approved by the Huxley Committee (e.g., education session at the annual Evolution meeting or the annual National Association of Biology Teachers conference).

Applications are due February 3, 2025. Learn more and apply here.

Have you had part of your dissertation published in Evolution or Evolution Letters this year? Consider submitting it for the SSE President’s Award for Outstanding Dissertation Paper. Previously only for papers in Evolution, this award now may also recognize papers published in Evolution Letters. 

Learn more and submit your nomination by January 31.

SSE is now accepting nominations for the Dobzhansky Prize to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding early-career evolutionary biologist. 

We seek nominees working in all areas of evolutionary biology, on any taxonomic group/system, using empirical and/or theoretical approaches. We hope the pool of nominees will reflect the many axes and components of diversity in the evolutionary biology community. We are specifically looking for candidates who take creative approaches to answering pressing questions in evolutionary biology. We welcome nominations of researchers around the globe.

The Dobzhansky Prize recipient presents the Dobzhansky Prize plenary at the annual Evolution meeting. The prize is accompanied by a 5,000 USD award. 

Submit your nomination by December 1, 2024. 

The American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists announce the call for nominations for the ASN/SSE/SSB Inclusiveness, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Award. The IDEA Award will be given to a person at any career stage who has strengthened the ecology and evolutionary biology community by promoting inclusiveness and diversity in our fields. The award can also be presented to a group. The recipient(s) will be invited to present a plenary lecture at the annual Evolution meeting. Each recipient will also receive a plaque and a $1000 honorarium (shared among recipients if more than one). 

Learn more and submit a nomination. Deadline: October 25, 2024

2024 Recipient
Congratulations to the 2024 recipient, Dr. Samarth Mathur, for his paper, “An evolutionary perspective on genetic load in small, isolated populations as informed by whole genome resequencing and forward-time simulations.” Read more about Dr. Mathur's paper.

2024 Honorable Mention
Congratulations also to this year’s Honorable Mention, Dr. Robin Costello, for her paper, “Multilevel selection on social network traits differs between sexes in experimental populations of forked fungus beetles.” Read more about Dr. Costello's paper.

Who are your evolutionary biology heroes? Who do you know whose conceptual advances, impactful publications, outreach and education efforts, mentorship and training, service to the community, or diversity and inclusion work has contributed to the evolutionary biology field and community? Maybe it’s you! Consider nominating yourself or someone else for the SSE Lifetime Achievement Award. Nominators will be asked to complete a short form describing the nominee’s contributions to the field and community. A detailed nomination letter is not required for the initial nomination. Learn more and submit your nomination by September 30!

Congratulations to the recipient of the 2024 Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation, Mackenzie Urquhart-Cronish! Mackenzie presented “Testing the influence of historical range expansion on contemporary mating system evolution.”

We are also pleased to announce two Honorable Mentions this year: Yuki Haba, who presented “Origin of the London Underground mosquito, Culex pipiens bioform molestus”, and Michelle McCauley, who presented “A pluralistic approach to sex: increased mutation rate and a coevolving parasite maintain outcrossing.”

Thank you to all of our Hamilton finalists, who presented 15 outstanding talks in the Hamilton Symposium during the virtual portion of the Evolution meeting. These talks will be available to all meeting registrants later this year.

The SSE International Committee invites applications for the International Event Grants, which provide funding for international symposia, workshops, courses, and other events within the field of evolutionary biology, including virtual events. Our priority is to support events that benefit emerging communities in the field of evolutionary biology. The diversity of participants and invited speakers will be considered as a criterion for selection. 

Learn more and apply by September 15, 2024.

Congratulations to the finalists for the 2024 Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation! This year’s finalists are: Chris Blake, McCall Calvert, Sylvia Durkin, Ana-Hermina Ghenu, Yuki Haba, Erik Iverson, Brian Lerch, Michelle McCauley, Ruthvik Pallagatti, Autumn Peterson, Rosalyn Price-Waldman, Nitin Ravikanthachari, Saubhik Sarkar, Emily Troyer, and Mackenzie Urquhart-Cronish. 

These finalists will present their work in the Hamilton Award Symposium during the virtual portion of the Evolution meeting on Thursday, June 27 from 1:30 to 7:30 pm Eastern (GMT-4). We hope you will join us for this series of excellent student talks!

SSE Council is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award, Dr. Ruth Shaw.

Dr. Shaw was selected for her fundamental empirical and conceptual contributions to evolutionary biology and her commitment to SSE. Dr. Shaw has developed foundational methods for statistical inferences about fitness in natural populations. She has implemented these methods in the field to assess fitness in natural populations, such as in The Echinacea Project, studying the long-lived Echinacea angustifolia to evaluate the consequences of habitat fragmentation in tallgrass prairie. Dr. Shaw has also advanced understanding of the fitness effects of de novo mutations, capacity for ongoing evolutionary adaptation, and geographic scale of adaptation in wild populations. Dr. Shaw has served in numerous roles in SSE since 1991, most recently as President in 2020.

Dr. Shaw will present the Lifetime Achievement Award talk at the virtual portion of the 2024 Evolution meeting on Friday, June 28 at 7:45 am Eastern (GMT-4). Visit the Evolution meeting website for the full program and to register.

Congratulations to our 2024 T. H. Huxley Award winner, Tim Hartelt! This award provides funding for an SSE member to present evolution education resources at an education-focused session or conference.

Tim Hartelt is a PhD student advised by Dr. Helge Martens in the Department of Biology Education at the University of Kassel in Germany. Hartelt was selected for his educational resource, "Metaconceptual Learning Activities for Promoting Metacognitive Awareness and Self-Regulation of Intuitive Thinking in Evolution Education." In the activities, students actively engage with their intuitive thinking to develop an appropriate understanding of evolution. Learn more about the activity here, and read a recent paper by Hartelt and colleagues here. As part of the award, Hartelt will receive funding to present his work at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in November.

Congratulations to the recipient of the 2023 IDEA Award, Dr. Corey Welch! 

Dr. Welch was selected for his wide range of work to broaden participation of students and professionals from diverse backgrounds in all areas of STEM. Using the latest research on student success and his training in vertebrate ecology and evolution, he established and now directs an award-winning undergraduate training program, the STEM Scholars Program at Iowa State University. During his work with the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), where he served on the board of directors for six years, Dr. Welch launched an ongoing mentoring program at the society’s annual meeting and has served as a facilitator for the Linton-Poodry SACNAS Leadership Institutes. In addition to this work, Dr. Welch has led more than 40 seminars and presentations, mainly at biology and EEB departments, on how to improve DEI in STEM. Most recently, Dr. Welch founded the Sharon Farr Welch Northern Cheyenne Tribal Scholarship program for students from his own Northern Cheyenne community to pursue higher education. 

Dr. Corey Welch will present his work during the IDEA Award Plenary at the in-person portion of the Evolution 2024 meeting in Montreal this July. This event will also be live-streamed for all meeting registrants.

The SSE Caregiver Award is meant to assist members who have additional needs and responsibilities that can inhibit participation at the annual Evolution meeting. This award provides up to $500 to SSE members that need assistance in covering caregiver costs while attending the annual Evolution meeting (in person or virtually).

A "caregiver" is broadly defined and includes people caring for children or dependent adults (including adult children with a disability or elderly relatives), and people in need of personal assistance; this award can be spent as the awardee wishes to facilitate attendance. For example, this award can be used (but is not limited) to:

- bring someone that is in your care to the Evolution meeting
- cover the cost of dependent care at home while you travel
- bring someone that is helping to care for you to the Evolution meeting
- cover the cost of dependent care while you attend virtually
- cover any extra accessibility costs associated with attending

Awardees can spend this money in whatever way will help alleviate the cost of caregiving. We anticipate up to 20 awards will be made available, depending on the number of applicants.

Deadline: March 15, 2024

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is now accepting proposals for the Small Grants Program for Local and Regional Outreach Promoting the Understanding of Evolutionary Biology. 

These grants provide support for local and regional educational outreach activities to take place during 2023. Examples of past outreach activities have included public lectures, exhibits, student competitions, and professional development events for teachers.

Grants of up to $1000 USD will be awarded. Applicants must be members of SSE. 

Learn more and apply by March 1, 2024.

Applications are now open for the 2024 Graduate Research Excellence Grant (GREG) R. C. Lewontin Award competition. These awards offer up to $2,500 USD to assist students in the first two years of their PhD programs. These grants are part of the Graduate Research Excellence Grants award program.

Learn more about how to apply.

Deadline: February 23, 2024

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is pleased to announce the 2024 T.H. Huxley award, named in honor of Darwin's very public supporter, which recognizes and promotes the development of high-quality evolution education resources. If you have an interesting project or educational activity to share, consider applying for this award. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are encouraged to apply. 

This award provides funding for an SSE member to present evolution education resources at an education-focused session or conference approved by the Huxley Committee (e.g., education session at the annual Evolution meeting or the annual National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference).

Applications are due February 1st, 2024. Learn more and apply here.

This award is awarded annually for an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation paper published in an issue of the journal Evolution during a given calendar year. Applications open in the fall and close January 31. The award comes with a $1000 honorarium. To be eligible for consideration, a manuscript must be based on graduate work of the primary author. The manuscript must have been published in a 2023 issue of the journal Evolution (Volume 77). This award includes a US $1000 honorarium, and will be awarded at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution. The recipient is invited to attend the annual meeting to receive the award. 

Deadline: January 31, 2024. Learn more and apply here.

SSE is pleased to announce a weekly virtual seminar series featuring recipients of our Graduate Research Excellence Grants. Seminars will be held on Mondays at 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Eastern US time. Speakers will present 45-minute talks followed by 15 minutes for questions.

The first set of talks will feature nine recipients of the 2023 GREG R.C. Lewontin Awards:

October 2: Akshat Mall, University of Idaho
October 9: Jenna Palmisano, University of Central Florida
October 16: Sage Madden, University of California Davis
October 23: Nathalie Alomar, Yale University
October 30: Wout van der Heide, Cornell University
November 6: Erica Vong, University of Ottawa
November 13: Claire Williams, University of Nevada, Reno
November 27: Neil Balchan, Oklahoma State University
December 4: Faye Romero, University of Rochester

This series is organized by the Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC). Learn more and find the link to join the event here.

The SSE International Committee invites applications for the International Event Grants, which provide funding for international symposia, workshops, courses, and other events within the field of evolutionary biology, including virtual events. Our priority is to support events that benefit emerging communities in the field of evolutionary biology. The diversity of participants and invited speakers will be considered as a criterion for selection. 

Learn more and apply by October 31, 2023.

SSE is now accepting nominations for the Dobzhansky Prize to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding early-career evolutionary biologist. 

We seek nominees working in all areas of evolutionary biology, on any taxonomic group/system, using empirical and/or theoretical approaches. We hope the pool of nominees will reflect the many axes and components of diversity in the evolutionary biology community. We are specifically looking for candidates who take creative approaches to answering pressing questions in evolutionary biology. We welcome nominations of researchers around the globe.

The Dobzhansky Prize recipient presents the Dobzhansky Prize plenary at the annual Evolution meeting. The prize is accompanied by a 5,000 USD award. 

Submit your nomination by December 1, 2023.