Join us for the December Data Use Club to hear about the research of the two 2025 GBIF Graduate Researchers Award winners. The Graduate Researchers Award (formerly Young Researchers Award) is an annual scholarship programme that promotes and encourages innovation in biodiversity-related research using data shared through the GBIF network. Since bestowing its first awards in 2010, the programme has recognized outstanding achievements in original biodiversity research by more than two dozen Master’s and PhD students around the world.
2025 Graduate Researcher Award recipients
PhD student Kumdet Panshak Solomon of University of Jos in Nigeria presents research which advances biodiversity informatics and conservation in West Africa by leveraging GBIF-mediated data collected through BirdPlus, a mobile app developed with the Nigerian Bird Atlas Project (NiBAP). Designed to increase citizen science participation and data representation from the Global South, BirdPlus expands coverage of underrepresented bird species in Nigeria through a multilingual, user-friendly and offline-capable platform.
Master's student Esteban Marentes Herrera from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali in Colombia presents research focuses on using machine learning models to predict beetle species diversity across Colombia’s Antioquia province. Despite Colombia being a megadiverse country, current species estimates—particularly for arthropods—are underrepresented in data records. His model integrates occurrence data and curated checklists from GBIF with habitat and environmental variables from public repositories to provide a more comprehensive estimate of beetle diversity in the region.