ABOUT | ELIGIBILITY | HOW TO APPLY | EVALUTION CRITERIA | AWARD SYMPOSIUM | PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS
The W. D. Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation will be given to a current or very recent graduate student who presents an outstanding talk based on their graduate work at the annual Evolution meeting. Finalists will present their talks during the live-streamed Hamilton Award symposium during the virtual part of the meeting May 29-30. The application to become a Hamilton award finalist will be part of registration for the virtual meeting.
PhD graduates who defended their PhD research after May 29, 2024, as well as current graduate students who have been enrolled in a graduate program for at least two (2) years, are eligible for this year’s competition. Note that the Hamilton competition is for dissertation research, and abstracts may not contain results arising from postdoctoral studies. Applicants must be members of SSE (learn more about SSE membership here and join here). Note that SSE members from eligible countries and territories can receive free meeting registration.
The application to become a Hamilton award finalist is part of registration for the virtual portion of the annual Evolution meeting. During registration, you must submit an abstract for your talk and check a box indicating your interest in the Hamilton Award competition.
Meeting registration is now open. Please submit your abstract and indicate your interest in this award by April 15, 2025.
All virtual meeting participants, including Hamilton finalists, may present in both the virtual and in-person portions of the meeting. Applicants are welcome to submit the same or different talks to the virtual and in-person portions of the meeting, but only virtual talks can be entered into the Hamilton competition.
Abstracts submitted during meeting registration will be used to select finalists. Abstracts will be anonymized prior to scoring, and will not be scored by evaluators with a conflict of interest with the applicant (e.g. if they are the applicant’s advisor or serve on the applicant’s committee). Abstracts will be scored in four categories described below. Abstracts with the highest average scores will be selected as finalists to present in the Hamilton Award Symposium. Each category will be scored on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest.
Completeness/richness:
5 - Abstract clearly indicates that experimental work and analysis is completed (i.e., actual results are discussed and described findings are not overly vague), results described are sufficient to address the questions, problems, or hypotheses presented, and the amount of data described would be sufficient for at least one “original article” Evolution manuscript.
1 - Abstract suggests work is very incomplete (few concrete results reported) or completeness cannot be evaluated from the information provided.
**Note: abstracts can focus on data equivalent to a single manuscript/thesis chapter or on data equivalent to multiple manuscripts/thesis chapters. Either strategy is fine and can earn full marks in this category—when choosing between these strategies, applicants should consider whether they can effectively communicate the work in a 300-word abstract and in a ~12-minute talk. Either way, abstracts should focus primarily on the applicant’s own work. Prior or complementary work from the same research group can be mentioned for context, but should not be the focus of the abstract.**
Importance of the work and findings:
5 - Abstract is relevant to evolutionary biology. Motivating questions/hypotheses are of broad interest to the evolutionary biology community outside of the specific study system, results are interpreted in the context of the hypotheses or questions under study, and abstract clearly communicates how the findings advance our understanding of evolution.
1 - Abstract is not relevant or only marginally relevant to evolutionary biology
**Note: if all Hamilton committee members score the abstract as 1 in this category, the abstract will be excluded from further consideration regardless of other scores.**
Clarity/logic/presentation:
5 - Abstract is polished: it is well edited, has an organized flow of ideas, and is within the word limit (300 words). Abstract is understandable to a general evolutionary audience with minimal jargon and necessary background explained. Motivation for the work (big picture and research gaps) is clearly explained. Results are clearly interpreted in the context of the motivating questions. Enough detail is provided that the reader can understand what types of data/approaches were used.
1 - Four or more items in the list above are missing.
Quality/thoroughness of the methods:
5 - Sufficient detail is provided that the nature of the data and data analysis is clear—details will vary depending on type of research, but some details that might be helpful are: sampling design (for observational studies) or experimental setup (for manipulative experiments) or theoretical approach (key model parameters and whether analytical or simulation approaches were used); type and source of data (e.g., morphology, DNA, RNA, etc. and are these data new or mined from other sources); critical variables in the dataset (key predictor/independent and response/dependent variables, with some detail on how these were measured if needed); key analysis approaches (phylogenetic comparative methods, scans for selection, population structure analysis, mixed models etc.). Some indication of the size of the dataset is often helpful (how many taxa, how many replicates, type of genomic dataset, etc.). In terms of quality, data/approaches are both appropriate (type of data and analyses) and sufficient (amount of data) for the questions under study. Data are interpreted appropriately in light of motivating hypotheses, questions.
1 - Too few details are provided to evaluate methodology OR data/approaches are fundamentally and fatally flawed.
Finalists will be notified in mid May. Finalists will present their research during the live-streamed Hamilton Award Symposium during the virtual part of the meeting (May 29-30). Talks will be recorded and available on the Evolution Meetings YouTube channel. Talks not selected for the Hamilton Award Symposium will be scheduled during regular virtual talk sessions. Check the meeting website for more information about how to prepare your talk.
The most competitive talks will be those that can convey a complete story. Such talks are most likely to be given by graduate students who are close to completing their dissertations or by former graduate students who wish to present results from a dissertation defended within the past year. Talks that primarily present preliminary data or just an initial part of a dissertation are not likely to be competitive, and we strongly suggest that those students wait to compete for this award.
Winners will be selected and notified after the virtual portion of the Evolution meeting.
The winner(s) of the award will each receive $1,000 US and a one-year membership to the Society for the Study of Evolution, which includes one year of access to the journal Evolution. Finalists will receive $500 US. Up to two Honorable Mentions will each also receive a one-year membership to the Society for the Study of Evolution, including access to Evolution.
Recipients will be encouraged to submit an accompanying article to Evolution (primary research, review, insight or commentary, fast-tracked through review and made freely available) within 2 months of the meeting.
Winners and honorable mentions listed below; winners are listed in bold text.
2024
Mackenzie Urquhart-Cronish
Yuki Haba
Michelle McCauley
2023
Arielle Fogel, Duke University
James Gallagher, University of Denver
2022
Thomas Day, Georgia Institute of Technology
Cinnamon Mittan, Michigan State University
2021
Liming Cai, Harvard University
Sarah Khalil, Tulane University
Arianna Kuhn, American Museum of Natural History
2020
Due to the cancellation of the Evolution 2020 meeting, this award competition was not held in 2020.
2019
Michelle Stitzer, University of California, Davis. Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra.
Sarah Friedman, University of California Davis. Advisor: Dr. Peter Wainwright.
Rachel Moran, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Advisor: Dr. Suzanne McGaugh.
Rachel Thayer, University of California, Berkeley. Advisor: Dr. Nipam Patel.
2018
Christopher D. Pull, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Supervisor: Dr. Sylvia Cremer.
Debora Goedert, Dartmouth College. Advisor: Dr. Ryan G. Calsbeek.
Karin van der Burg, Cornell University. Advisor: Dr. Robert Reed.
2017
Emily Behrman, University of Pennsylvania. Advisor: Dr. Paul Schmidt.
Jasmine Ono, Univ British Columbia. Advisor: Dr. Sally Otto.
Foen Peng, University of Washington. Advisor: Dr. H.D. 'Toby' Bradshaw.
Chathurani Ranathunge, Mississippi State. Advisor: Dr. Mark Welch.
2016
Nina Wale, Pennsylvania State University. Advisor: Dr. Andrew Read.
Amanda Gibson, Indiana University. Advisor: Dr. Curt Lively.
Jason Sardell, University of Texas at Austin. Advisor: Dr. Mark Kirkpatrick.
2015
Maude Baldwin, Harvard University. Advisor: Dr. Scott Edwards.
Sarah Fitzpatrick, Colorado State University. Advisor: Dr. Chris Funk.
Nathaniel Sharp, University of Toronto. Advisor: Dr. Aneil Agrawal.
2014
Daniel Field, Yale University. Advisor: Dr. Jacques A. Gauthier.
Benjamin Liebeskind, University of Texas, Austin. Advisors: Dr. David Hillis, Dr. Harold Zakon.
Megan Peterson, University of California, Santa Cruz. Advisor: Dr. Kathleen Kay.
2013
Emily Jacobs-Palmer, Harvard University. Advisor: Dr. Hopi Hoekstra.
Zoe Assaf, Stanford University. Advisor: Dr. Dmitri Petrov.
Matthew McGee, University of California, Davis. Advisor: Dr. Peter Wainwright.
Rebecca Satterwhite, University of Houston. Advisor: Dr. Tim Cooper.
2012
Christopher Martin, University of California, Davis. Advisor: Dr. Peter Wainwright.
Aleeza Gerstein, University of British Columbia. Advisor: Dr. Sally Otto.
Erin McCullough, University of Montana. Advisor: Dr. Doug Emlen.
2011
William Ratcliff, University of Minnesota. Advisor: Dr. R. Ford Denison.
Sarah Bodbyl Roels, University of Kansas. Advisor: Dr. John Kelly.
Christopher Oufiero, University of California at Riverside. Advisor: Dr. Theodore Garland, Jr.
2010
Amanda Izzo, University of Michigan. Advisor: Dr. Elizabeth Tibbetts.
Benjamin Blackman, Duke University. Supervisors: Dr. John Willis and Dr. Daniel Rokhsar.
Christopher Martin, University of California – Davis. Advisor: Dr. Peter Wainwright.
David Lowry, University of Texas – Austin. Supervisor: Dr. Thomas Juenger.
Ian Wang, University of California – Davis. Advisor: Dr. Brad Shaffer.
