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Announcing our student awards!

During its history, the UCMP has been extremely fortunate to have received donations from individuals dedicated to the support of graduate training and research, especially field work. Their vision and generosity greatly enhance our training program, enabling our students to do exploratory work that is otherwise hard to fund, and we are extremely grateful to them. Each year we use the earnings from these endowments to make research awards to our graduate students, and we are proud to announce this year's recipients and offer congratulations to:

Brian Swartz Liz Ferrer and Jessie Atterholt Theresa Grieco Emily Lindsey
Susumu Tomiya Sarah Werning Maya deVries

The graduate student award winners are, clockwise from top left: Brian Swartz, Liz Ferrer and Jessie Atterholt, Theresa Grieco, Emily Lindsey, Maya deVries, Sarah Werning, and Susumu Tomiya. All these photos are from Cal Day 2009 and 2010.

Jessie Atterholt who, along with her advisor Kevin Padian, will be at Bodega Bay to study how crabs may play a role in the disarticulation of skeletons prior to fossilization. Jessie receives support from the Doris O. and Samuel P. Welles Fund.

Maya deVries receives a UCMP Graduate Student Research Grant to conduct isotopic work on mantis shrimp collected at the UCB Gump Station in Moorea. The data will help inform the relationship between different appendage morphologies and prey resources.

Theresa Grieco receives support from both the Welles Fund and the Dr. Frank Elmer Peabody Memorial Fellowship to support her studies on the role that specific genes play in the initiation of tooth development.

Emily Lindsey receives support from the Welles fund to support travel to a field site in Ecuador to conduct excavations that will inform the chronology, causes, and dynamics of the late-Quaternary extinction event.

Susumu Tomiya receives support from both the Welles Fund and the Annie M. Alexander Scholarship for a tour of North American museums and the John Day Fossil Beds to examine fossils that will further inform his study of trophic diversity dynamics during the Eocene.

Sarah Werning will be joined by Liz Ferrer with support from the Welles Fund to conduct excavations at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. This work will inform their studies on the growth and phylogeny of some of the earliest dinosaurs.

We are particularly pleased to make our first fellowship award in honor of Joseph T. Gregory, who served UCMP, first as student then as professor, chair, director, mentor, and friend for more than 50 years. In his will, Joe left a bequest to establish a fund to support graduate student research in the field of vertebrate paleontology. The first recipient of this award goes to Brian Swartz in order to support his study of the first land-dwelling vertebrates. Appropriately, a significant part of his dissertation focuses on the description and interpretation of Devonian specimens collected by Joe Gregory.
 

Photos by Mariska Batavia, Maya deVries, and Jen Skene