David Blackburn is very pleased to announce that, after careful review by the Awards Committee (Gavin Naylor, Advait Jukar, Ed Stanley, Mandee Hall, and Hong-Shan Wang), the following proposals submitted to the NH Spring 2025 Travel Award Competition have been funded:
Graduate Students
The 2025 Spring Graduate Student Travel Awards are supported by the FLMNH Department of Natural History using funds from the Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowment, B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment, and the Dr. Madelyn M. Lockhart Endowment. If you would like to help support these funds for future student awards, please go to:
Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowment
B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment
Dr. Madelyn M. Lockhart Endowment
Erin Grady (Advisor Rob Guralnick)
Will receive funds to travel to the Conference of Advancing Participatory Science where she will give a presentation entitled “Participatory science user dynamics: How iNaturalist participants contribute to biodiversity data coverage.”
Alisa Luthra (Advisor Michelle LeFebvre)
Will receive funds to attend the annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology where she will give a presentation entitled “Zooarchaeological Investigations of Florida Gulf Coast Civic-Ceremonial Centers.”
Emeline Pano (Advisor Nico Cellinese)
Will receive funds to conduct field research to collect plants.
Bharti Parihar (Advisor Doug Soltis)
Will receive funds to conduct field research in Namibia.
Mitchell Riegler (Advisor Jon Bloch)
Will receive funds to attend the conference of the Association for the Materials & Methods in Paleontology where he will give a presentation entitled “Describing Ziphodont Dental Microstructure Using Desktop 3D Automated Scanning.”
Fabian Romero (Advisors Doug and Pam Soltis)
Will receive funds to visit herbaria and collect field research in Chile.
Undergraduate Students
The 2025 Spring Undergraduate Student Travel Awards are supported by the FLMNH Department of Natural History using funds from the Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowment, B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment, and the Dr. Madelyn M. Lockhart Endowment. If you would like to help support these funds for future student awards, please go to:
Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowment
B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment
Dr. Madelyn M. Lockhart Endowment
Gabriela Garder (Advisor Steve Manchester)
Will receive funds to travel to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to examine specimens.
Kaitlyn Krinsky (Advisor Steve Manchester)
Will receive funds to attend a conference in Connecticut to give a presentation entitled “Paleocene flora of Sand Draw.”
Melissa Santiesteban (Advisor Steve Manchester)
Will receive funds to attend a conference in Connecticut to give a presentation entitled “Describing a new fossil fruit from the Cretaceous Dakota Formation of Nebraska.”
Postdocs
The 2025 Spring Postdoc Travel Awards are supported by a combination of the Lawrence Dean Harris & Kathleen A. Deagan Endowment, Mary Ross Endowment, and departmental IDC funds. If you would like to help support these funds for future Postdoc awards, please go to:
Lawrence Dean Harris & Kathleen A. Deagan Endowment
Mary Ross Endowment
Natural Science Special Projects and Awards
Makenzie Mabry (Advisors Doug and Pam Soltis)
Will receive funds to conduct field research in Namibia.
Collections Managers & Scientific Staff (CMSS)
The 2025 Spring CMSS Travel Awards are supported by a combination of the Lawrence Dean Harris & Kathleen A. Deagan Endowment, Mary Ross Endowment, and departmental IDC funds. If you would like to help support these funds for future CMSS awards, please go to:
Lawrence Dean Harris & Kathleen A. Deagan Endowment
Mary Ross Endowment
Natural Science Special Projects and Awards
Jason Bourque (Vertebrate Paleontology)
Will receive funds to attend the conference of the Association for the Materials & Methods in Paleontology where he will give a presentation entitled “Preparation of Vertebrate Fossils Preserved in Soft Sediments from the Late Miocene Montbrook Site, Levy County, Florida.”
Megan Fry (NAGPRA; PhD student in CLAS Anthropology)
Will receive funds to attend the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology where she will give a presentation entitled “Bedlam, Bugs, and Burial Rites: female hip assemblages in early Medieval Britain.”
Rachel Narducci (Vertebrate Paleontology; PhD Student in CLAS Biology)
Will receive funds to attend the conference of the Association for the Materials & Methods in Paleontology where she will give a presentation entitled “Exceptionally large jackets required: Collection of an adult gomphothere skeleton from a sandy bone bed in north-central Florida.”
Carla Ruffer (TESI)
Will receive funds to attend a conference in Miami related to outreach and science communication.
Andrea Torvinen (Ceramics Lab)
Will receive funds to attend the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology where she will give a presentation entitled “Characterizing constellations of practice in Pensacola shell-tempered pottery along the northern Gulf Coast (1150-1700 CE).”