Tidbits

Congratulations!

Sarah Amugongo was awarded an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant entitled, "In utero sources of skeletal variation: the role of maternal prenatal stress."

Jere Lipps has been awarded the Raymond C. Moore Medal of the SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology) for Excellence in Paleontology for 2010. The Medal will be presented at a ceremony in New Orleans at the Annual Meeting of the Society in April 2010. The Moore Medal is given annually to a paleontologist, member or not, who has made outstanding contributions to paleontology.

Dave Smith was a recipient of the Berkeley Campus Spot Award in recognition of his "beyond the call" efforts in making the 2009 Cal Day a resounding success!

UCMP's Understanding Evolution project received a Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant. UCMP will be working with partners AIBS and NESCent to expand the current UE website to include an Undergraduate Library — stay tuned for more details!

Jann Vendetti, who will be filing in December, has accepted a postdoctoral position at Cal State Los Angeles in January. She will be working with larval biologist, Patrick Krug.

2009 student awards

UCMP is pleased to announce that Sarah Amugongo and Sarah Werning each received a one-semester Annie Alexander Fellowship; Theresa Grieco was awarded a one-semester Peabody Fellowship; and Joey Pakes and Molly Wright each received a Palmer award. It addition, UCMP was able to offer five additional graduate student research awards this year. These went to Maya DeVries, Kaitlin Maquire, Emily Lindsey, Brian Swartz, and Susumu Tomiya. All awards are in support of individual graduate student research.

Welcome new students!

Jesse Atterholt joins the Padian Lab from the University of Pennsylvania State, where she majored in geology with a concentration in paleobiology (and a double-minor in French and women's studies). Jesse is interested in macroevolution and vertebrate paleontology.

Liz Ferrer also joins the Padian Lab. Liz received a Bachelor's degree in geology with a paleobiology specialization from Bowling Green State University, Ohio. Her general research interests are in vertebrate paleontology and functional morphology.

Jennifer Hofmeister joins the Caldwell Lab from UCLA where she received a B.S. in marine biology. She is interested in cephalopod life history and evolution.

Jenna Judge joins the Lindberg Lab. She received her Bachelors degree from UC Santa Barbara and will be focusing her research on the role of dysoxia in molluscan evolution.

Other news

In partnership with the National Center for Science Education, UCMP hosted a highly successful summer institute — Think Evolution! Thirty-four teachers and science educators spent four high energy days engaged in conversations with scientists on tree-thinking, evo-devo, molecular and human evolution, followed by sessions focusing on how to integrate these topics into their curriculum … A first step in building a strong evolution community here in the Bay Area.