LATEST NEWS

SSE sponsors and funds a variety of exciting initiatives to further the study of evolution and engage a diversity of people in research. This month we highlight the Colombian Association for Evolutionary Biology (COLEVOL) Symposium. SSE has contributed funds to this program for several years, including last year’s meeting in Cali, Colombia. Continue reading to hear from Franchesco Molina Henao, who helped organize last year’s meeting, about how SSE funding helped them achieve their goals.

The SSE Council invites proposals for two SSE-sponsored symposia to be held in conjunction with the 2019 annual meeting in Providence, RI. The Council considers the novelty of the topic and likely interest among its members. We encourage proposals from sub-fields or taxonomic groups that have been underrepresented in past symposia. Please note: The SSE Council considers the diversity of participants as an important criterion for symposium selection. Proposals are due July 15, 2018. Learn more about the selection process and how to submit your proposal here.

Congratulations to the 12 recipients of the 2018 Graduate Research Excellence Grant (GREG) Rosemary Grant Advanced Award! This award, created this year, assists PhD candidates in enhancing the scope of their dissertation research. Thank you to our members whose donations helped fund these awards! Click here to view this year's recipients.

The New Faculty Profile series highlights and introduces new Principal Investigators who are SSE members. This month we highlight Dr. Jeremy Yoder. Dr. Yoder is an assistant professor of biology at California State University Northridge studying coevolution and the population genomics of plants. Read his full profile here.

This year SSE is granting more than $100,000 in travel awards to help graduate students and postdoctoral fellows attend the Second Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Montpellier. Email notifications have now been sent to the >100 selected awardees. Thank you to our 2017 donors who allowed us to fund extra travel awards!

The SSE Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC) is in search of two additional PhD student members to serve in the 2019 cohort! The GSAC represents student interests to the Council and facilitates interaction among students and between students and mentors. Applicants should be organized, outgoing, and possess leadership skills. Learn more about GSAC and apply here by April 15.

Thank you to everyone who donated to ASN and SSE to fund grants to students in Puerto Rico affected by Hurricane Maria. We were able to grant over $18,000 to help students continue their research. Continue reading to hear one student who received funding, Paola Matos Ruiz, explain the impact of these funds.

It’s never too early to start thinking about the next Evolution meeting! Next year’s meeting with SSE, ASN, and SSB will be in Providence, RI on June 21-25. Keep an eye out for the call for symposium proposals - coming soon!

On February 8, the National Science Foundation (NSF) posted an important notice to presidents of universities and colleges and heads of other NSF grantee organizations stating that the NSF does not tolerate sexual harassment, or any kind of harassment, within the agency, at grantee organizations, field sites, or anywhere NSF-funded science and education are conducted. Read the full notice here.

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is launching a new program to place teachers in research labs for part of the summer, and we need society members like you to host teachers! Scientists in host labs are asked to work with the teacher to engage them in some aspect of a research project for 4-8 weeks. This program will give teachers funded, hands-on experiences that they can then take back to their classrooms. Continue reading to learn more about the program and how to get involved!

As part of SSE's new series of New Faculty Profiles, we highlight Dr. Sarah W. Fitzpatrick. Dr. Fitzpatrick is an assistant professor at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University. She studies how genetic drift, gene flow, and selection interact in small and recently isolated populations in a changing environment. Read her full profile here.

This month we’re kicking off a new series of New Faculty Profiles to highlight and introduce up-and-coming PIs in SSE. Dr. Rayna C. Bell is a vertebrate research zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History studying the mechanisms that generate ecological and evolutionary diversity in amphibians and reptiles. Continue reading here to learn more about and her work.

Every year SSE celebrates Darwin’s birthday (February 12th) with the Darwin Day Roadshow, an SSE and BEACON program to bring hands-on science activities to K–12 students. This year we also engaged with other scientists and the public on social media to celebrate the diversity of researchers, questions, approaches and study organisms in our community—the breadth and depth of which Darwin never could have imagined. Thank you to everyone who joined the conversation on Twitter! Search the hashtag #IStudyEvolution to see the great variety of exciting research happening in this field.

Last month the SSE Council met in New Orleans to welcome the new leaders, share updates on committee activities, and discuss plans for 2018. For the first time the votes included graduate student members (from GSAC), Chair Jodie Wiggins and Past Chair Megan Kobiela. Plans discussed for 2018 included launching an online member database, establishing an SSE blog, and implementing a demographic survey of members to inform future diversity initiatives. Stay tuned for more news on these items in the next few months!

February is your last chance to get an SSE lifetime membership for $800—a bargain at the equivalent of 16 years of regular membership! Starting March 1, the lifetime rate will be $1000, corrected to meet a stipulation in the SSE Constitution that the lifetime rate be 20 times the regular yearly rate. (You can read the full Constitution and Bylaws here.) To become a lifetime member of SSE, please visit https://payments.evolutionsociety.org/joinsse/. 

Applications are now open for the T. H. Huxley Award, 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. Information on previous awards is available here. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are especially encouraged to apply. The awardee will receive funding to present evolution education resources at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) annual conference. This year's NABT conference will be held Nov. 8-11 in San Diego, CA. The deadline for applying for the Huxley award is March 23. Learn more and apply here.

The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) Council invites proposals for grants up to $3,000 to help support Society-sponsored Early-career Vocational Opportunities (EVO) Workshops. There are no requirements for topic or format of the workshop, as long as it is interactive and its content serves to provide foundational skills that are appropriate for early-career SSE members in the areas of conceptual understanding, data collection, data analysis, or professional development. The Workshop Selection Committee will select proposals on a rolling basis, and has already made one award, for an Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics Workshop at Friday Harbor Laboratories. (SSE members receive a $200 discount on registration!) Learn more about the grants here.

Does your research involve biological materials? The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefits Sharing was adopted in 2010 as part of the international treaty known as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The aim of the Nagoya Protocol is to ensure that the benefits associated with genetic resources, and also with traditional knowledge of biodiversity, are shared fairly and equitably. If you export biological materials from one of the 100 countries party to the Nagoya Protocol, you will need a Genetic Resource Access Permit. Continue reading to learn how you may be affected.

Continue reading for a special note about the graduate/postdoc travel awards from SSE and ASN for Evolution 2018 in Montpellier:

The deadline has been extended for the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize, which recognizes the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding young evolutionary biologist. We consider candidates who are working on all areas of evolutionary biology and on any taxonomic group (i.e., plants, animals, fungi, microbes, etc.) and who take empirical and/or theoretical approaches. We value diversity, and are seeking a broad and diverse applicant pool from all axes and components of diversity in the evolutionary biology community. Nominations and applications are due March 1. Learn more here.

This year's annual meeting with ASN, SSB, and ESEB has received more than 3500 applications for talks and posters. Concerns have been raised that the number of abstract submissions is many more than can be accommodated (800 talks and 1200 posters), which could lead to a large number of members being unable to present. Continue reading for a letter from SSE, ASN, and SSB presidents regarding these concerns.

Abstract submissions for Evolution 2018 in Montpellier have reopened for today only! They close again on January 18 at 9:00 am Central European Time. If you weren't able to submit an abstract, now is your chance. Visit the meeting website to submit an abstract.

Please contribute to our fundraising drive to offer financial support for graduate students in evolutionary biology who were affected by the devastating hurricanes in Puerto Rico this past summer:  https://subfill.uchicago.edu/JournalPubs/Donation.aspx?webpub=ANX.  We are coordinating funding with ASN. So far, more than 50 students have applied for grants to help replace lost lab equipment, cover travel to host labs, or help meet basic living expenses. Thank you to those members who have already donated! The first rounds of grants have now been issued, and I know that the funds will make a huge difference to these students.

The election results are in! We welcome Mark Rausher as the new president-elect, Tracey Chapman as the new Non-North American VP, John Stinchcombe as the new Secretary, and Amy Angert and Andrea Sweigart as the new Councilors (class of 2020). Congratulations to our newly elected officers, and thank you for being willing to contribute your time and energy to serving the Society! The amendment to include two members of the Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC) as voting members on the SSE Council also passed -- congratulations and thank you to GSAC members for their commitment to the society!

Students and recent graduates interested in attending Evolution 2018 can also submit abstracts to the Hamilton Symposium until January 15. Applicants are encouraged to also apply for other symposia; if you are not selected for the Hamilton Symposium, you may be selected for another symposium. You will not be required to register for the conference until all presenters have been selected and notified. To learn more, visit the Hamilton Award page here.