[Taxacom] SSB Ernst Mayr Awards competition

[James Whitfield]

Society of Systematic Biology Awards Available

Ernst Mayr Award (Graduate Student Award)

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 $1000 and a set 
of available back issues of Systematic Biology.

Who is Eligible. Members of the Society who are students or have 
completed their Ph.D. within the last 15 months are eligible. Applicants 
may be from any country, but must be members of SSB, and are advised to 
join the Society as soon as possible to be considered (to join go to: 
http://systbio.org/?q=node/6). Previous Mayr award winners are not 
eligible.

Application Procedure. Applications should be sent to the current SSB 
Awards Committee Chair (Sydney Cameron), at ssb-apps at life.illinois.edu. 
E-mail submissions are required. In the subject line of the email, 
please indicate the SSB award category as "Mayr Award".

Applicants should: Submit a 400-word abstract of their talk to the SSB 
Mayr Awards Committee (ssb-apps at life.illinois.edu) by March 15, 2009. 
All candidates will be notified of their status no later than March 30, 
2009. If selected as a Mayr candidate, during the meeting registration 
process (http://evolutionmeetings09.org) enter a note about being a Mayr 
candidate in the field concerning participation in a specific session. 
The deadline for the meeting submission is the same as for all other 
talks, i.e., April 5.

Judging. Based on the submitted abstracts, the Mayr Awards Committee 
(appointed by the Awards Chair) will select a maximum of 15 applicants 
for inclusion in the Ernst Mayr session at the 2009 Moscow, Idaho 
meetings, which will be held at a single venue in a separate session. 
Talks will be judged on creativity, quality, excellence of research, and 
quality of presentation. Abstracts should clearly indicate methods used, 
conclusions, and the relevance to systematics. Presentations focusing on 
other areas of biology (ecology, behavior, genetics, populations or 
molecular biology, etc.) that lack a strong systematics emphasis are not 
eligible. Co-Authors. The paper may be co-authored. It is understood 
that the ideas, data and conclusions presented are primarily and 
substantially the work of the student presenter, and the intention is 
that the student presenter will be senior author on the published 
version of the paper.

Notification of Winner. The winner of the award will be announced at the 
SSB business meeting in Moscow, again during the banquet or awards 
ceremony at the conclusion of the Evolution Meetings, and an 
announcement will be published in Systematic Biology.

-- Sydney A. Cameron Assoc. Prof. Department of Entomology and Program 
in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology University of Illinois 
320 Morrill Hall 505 S. Goodwin Ave. Urbana, IL 61801 ofc ph. 
217-333-2340 lab ph 217-333-2170 cell ph 217 766-5631 
scameron at life.illinois.edu www.life.illinois.edu/scameron