LATEST NEWS

The SSE International Committee invites applications for the International Event Grants, which provide funding for international symposia, workshops, courses, and other events within the field of evolutionary biology, including virtual events. Our priority is to support events that benefit emerging communities in the field of evolutionary biology. The diversity of participants and invited speakers will be considered as a criterion for selection. 

Learn more and apply by September 15, 2024.

Congratulations to the finalists for the 2024 Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation! This year’s finalists are: Chris Blake, McCall Calvert, Sylvia Durkin, Ana-Hermina Ghenu, Yuki Haba, Erik Iverson, Brian Lerch, Michelle McCauley, Ruthvik Pallagatti, Autumn Peterson, Rosalyn Price-Waldman, Nitin Ravikanthachari, Saubhik Sarkar, Emily Troyer, and Mackenzie Urquhart-Cronish. 

These finalists will present their work in the Hamilton Award Symposium during the virtual portion of the Evolution meeting on Thursday, June 27 from 1:30 to 7:30 pm Eastern (GMT-4). We hope you will join us for this series of excellent student talks!

The SSE GSAC is looking for three new council members to join our 2025 cohort. Details below!

The GSAC represents student and postdoc interests to the SSE Council and facilitates interaction among students and postdocs, and between students, postdocs, and mentors. Our goal is to be a source of information for students and postdocs during their graduate school career and as they make career transitions, and to provide an early-career perspective to the rest of the SSE council. For example, recently we took a leading role in putting on the GREG Seminar Series, in-person workshops and networking events during the annual Evolution meeting, virtual International Symposia Series, and the SSE Caregiver Award.

Eligibility & Requirements

GSAC members must be graduate students at the time of application and members of SSE. (Learn more about how to join.) Applicants should be organized, possess leadership skills, and be interested in working with SSE Council and members to contribute to the Society. Many more details about our activities throughout the year can be found in our GSAC blog post from the former SSE Community Blog. 

We strongly encourage those with non-traditional pathways to graduate school, those from non-R1 universities, and those from outside the United States to apply. GSAC is also committed to diverse representation, and we encourage applicants from historically excluded ethnic, gender, and socio-economic backgrounds. 

Duties

Students serve either a 2 or 3 year term, depending on whether they are chair of their cohort, and generally spend 5-10 hours per month on GSAC activities. Please see page 25 in the Officers Handbook for more details about requirements and current roles. 

How to Apply

To apply, please submit the following to GSAC@evolutionsociety.org by August 30th, 2024 (any time zone):

 (1) A one page statement of interest, addressing: 

• The ideas you would like to bring to GSAC 


• Your experience with leadership, organization and/or communications 


• Your interest in the Society for the Study of Evolution and motivation for joining GSAC


• How you will contribute to the diversity of perspectives needed to represent the diverse student/postdoc body of SSE  


• Any interactions you have had with SSE, such as attending SSE meetings, events, or work on other SSE committees, if applicable


• That you are a current member of SSE

 (2) A copy of your CV

We look forward to reading your applications, and please contact us at gsac@evolutionsociety.org if you have any questions about this process.

The Evolution Code of Conduct commtitee is recruiting new EvoAllies for the Evolution meetings as part of our Safe Evolution initiative. The goal of the program is to improve the climate at the meetings, making them more welcoming for everyone. It is not enforcement (we have a safety officer to investigate and sanctioning committee to put in place any sanctions if warranted), but rather to help de-escalate situations, direct people to resources to help them, and to identify any problems.

People who sign up and are selected must attend a two hour online training on June 11, at 11 am US Eastern time (3 pm UTC, 8 am US Pacific) by members of the UT CLIMBS team and members of the Code of Conduct Committee.

We want to recruit people with a variety of life experiences, perspectives, and career stages. Our goal is to make people feel safe at the meeting; to that end, if you are facing or have faced questions about your possible misconduct, or have other reasons why your selection would be controversial, we ask that you do not sign up.

Applications will be evaluated by a subset of members of the Code of Conduct Committee and current EvoAllies. Applications close June 7 at 5 pm US Eastern time; chosen applicants will be notified by June 10 at noon US Eastern time. 

Submit your application here by June 7 at 5 pm Eastern. 

SSE Council is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award, Dr. Ruth Shaw.

Dr. Shaw was selected for her fundamental empirical and conceptual contributions to evolutionary biology and her commitment to SSE. Dr. Shaw has developed foundational methods for statistical inferences about fitness in natural populations. She has implemented these methods in the field to assess fitness in natural populations, such as in The Echinacea Project, studying the long-lived Echinacea angustifolia to evaluate the consequences of habitat fragmentation in tallgrass prairie. Dr. Shaw has also advanced understanding of the fitness effects of de novo mutations, capacity for ongoing evolutionary adaptation, and geographic scale of adaptation in wild populations. Dr. Shaw has served in numerous roles in SSE since 1991, most recently as President in 2020.

Dr. Shaw will present the Lifetime Achievement Award talk at the virtual portion of the 2024 Evolution meeting on Friday, June 28 at 7:45 am Eastern (GMT-4). Visit the Evolution meeting website for the full program and to register.

SSE, ASN, ESEB, and SSB are teaming up with The Story Collider for a science storytelling show on July 28th as part of the in-person portion of the 2024 Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology (Evolution 2024)! The theme for this event is “Throughout the Distribution," and it will feature 5 stories from 5 different viewpoints that represent the diversity of experiences in evolutionary biology.

Requirements:

The only requirement is that the story must be about you. We’re seeking true stories about your personal experiences with science to be included in the show. These must be stories—not lectures—with a beginning, middle, and end in which you undergo a change. 

All you need at this point is the seed of an idea for your story. It can be about almost anything:

- Perseverance and obstacles overcome (whether professional or scientific)
- Expectations upended
- Finding community, belonging, or acceptance in biology
- Adventure and danger
- Having your perspective changed 
- Being in over your head or a rough day in the field
- Conquering fears
- Finding work/life balance
- Being inspired
- Standing up for yourself
- An important experiment
- Misadventure, love, or loss
- How you first fell in love with science
- How your work has affected your personal life 

Primarily, the producers will look for a strong story arc – a change that takes place in the storyteller from beginning to the end. The Story Collider producers will help you develop this idea into an eight-to ten-minute-long story. For further inspiration, you can listen to examples of our last Story Collider Event in 2019 on SoundCloud. 

How to apply:

If you’re interested, please email the Story Collider producers at stories@storycollider.org by May 17th, 2024 and include a short (1-2 paragraphs) summary of your story and “Evolution 2024" in the subject line. 

Deadline: May 17th, 2024

If selected, the Story Collider producers will help you develop this idea into an eight-to ten-minute-long story in the weeks leading up to the show. The storytellers will perform their stories at the Story Collider event at 7:00 pm on July 28th at the in-person portion of the Evolution 2024 meeting in Montreal.

This event is organized by the SSE Diversity Committee, the ESEB Equal Opportunities Committee, the ASN Diversity Committee, and the SSB DEI Committee. Email the SSE Diversity Committee (diversity [at] evolutionsociety.org) or Misha Gajewski, Story Collider Managing Producer (mishagajewski [at] storycollider.org) with any questions. We look forward to hearing your stories at Evolution 2024!

The SSE Nominating Committee invites nominations for five Council positions beginning January 2025: President Elect, North American Vice President, and three Councilors. Nominations are accepted throughout the year, but only nominations submitted by April 15 will be considered for the 2025 ballot. We welcome self nominations. Continue reading for descriptions of each position.

We are pleased to offer free registration for the virtual portion of the Evolution 2024 meeting (June 27-28) to SSE members from 152 countries and territories around the world. All members who joined through the Global Membership Assistance Program are eligible. Meeting registration codes will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Learn more and apply here.

Congratulations to our 2024 T. H. Huxley Award winner, Tim Hartelt! This award provides funding for an SSE member to present evolution education resources at an education-focused session or conference.

Tim Hartelt is a PhD student advised by Dr. Helge Martens in the Department of Biology Education at the University of Kassel in Germany. Hartelt was selected for his educational resource, "Metaconceptual Learning Activities for Promoting Metacognitive Awareness and Self-Regulation of Intuitive Thinking in Evolution Education." In the activities, students actively engage with their intuitive thinking to develop an appropriate understanding of evolution. Learn more about the activity here, and read a recent paper by Hartelt and colleagues here. As part of the award, Hartelt will receive funding to present his work at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in November.

Hear from 11 recipients of our R. C. Lewontin Early Awards in this weekly virtual seminar series organized by the Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC). Student speakers present their research in a seminar-style format on Mondays from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Eastern via Zoom. Our first speaker on March 4 will be Robin Waterman of Michigan State University. Join the seminar here. We hope to see you there!