Suwon, Thursday, 14 October 2010: The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) today awarded two phd students with the first GBIF Young Researcher’s Award. The award was created to encourage graduate students to make use of data that are enabled through the GBIF network, to encourage innovative biodiversity research, and to reward excellence.

The first two Young Researcher Awardees were Ms. Amy McDougall from the Environmental Sciences School at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, for a proposal entitled “Bridging the Gap in a Climate Changed World: Is Conservation Planning by Taxa a Realistic Aim?” and Mr. Andrés Lira-Noriega from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas for a project entitled “A Comparison of Correlative and Mechanistic Ecological Niche Modelling Approaches for Understanding Biodiversity Patterns.“
 
“The selection committee was highly impressed by the caliber of research being done by the candidates and by the importance of GBIF-enabled data for their work,” said Dr. Mark Graham, 1st Vice Chair of the GBIF Science Committee, who led the panel that reviewed the nominations for the Award after several other members of the GBIF Science Committee, including the Chair, declared conflicts of interest and stepped down from the adjudication process.  “A sub-committee instead of the entire Science Committee was necessary and carefully picked because of our serious effort to prevent any conflict of interest” underlined the committee in its report to delegations.

Project proposals from 9 countries were assessed including Ghana, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Spain, United States, Ireland, Mexico, Argentina and Netherlands.  Proposals were solicited through a call from the GBIF Secretariat, and through outreach to the research community by GBIF country- and institutional delegations. 

“The immediate impression of the selection committee was that the proposals submitted demonstrated an impressive list of research projects over a wide range of topics,” continued Graham.  “Even though the committee could only award two prizes, all students are congratulated for their efforts in applying and for the important contributions they will make toward biodiversity conservation.”

"I was impressed by the originality of the winning proposals regarding the research questions to be addressed exploiting GBIF-enabled data compared with the innovative application of state-of-the-art biodiversity informatics tools,” commented Dr. Yde de Jong, GBIF Science Committee.  “It is a great indication how GBIF could serve mega e-science developments in the near future.”

It is the intention of the Committee to open the call for the next round of the Young Researcher’s Award before the end of the year.  Students at master or phd level interested in submitting applications should therefore refer back to the GBIF website for further information, or make contact with their respective GBIF country representatives.

Further information on the 2010 Young Researcher’s Award may be found on http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/showsingle/article/call-for-proposals-for-the-first-gbif-young-researchers-award-2010/