Tidbits

UCMP 2008 student awards
UCMP is pleased to announce that Molly Wright and Erin Meyer each received a D.K. Palmer award; and Stephanie Bush received the Remington-Kellogg award. In addition, UCMP offered two additional graduate student research awards this year. These went to Maya deVries and Joey Pakes. All awards are in support of individual graduate student research.

Welcome new students!
Jean Alupay joins the Caldwell lab from UC Davis where she received her Bachelor's degree in biology with an emphasis in marine biology. At UC Davis, she participated in the UC LEADS and McNair Scholars programs and conducted research at The Scripps Research Institute on the morphology of flying fish. The winner of a prestigious UC Berkeley "Chancellor's Fellowship," Jean is interested in working at the intersection of morphology and physiology affecting animal behavior.

Kaitlin Maguire joins the Barnosky Lab from Ohio University, where she received her master's degree in Geological Sciences. Her research interests lie in fossil mammals, particularly in the areas of niche modeling and paleoecology.

And welcome Cindy Looy!
UCMP is pleased to welcome Dr. Cynthia Looy who has accepted an appointment as an Assistant Professor in Integrative Biology and as an Assistant Curator in UCMP. Cindy is currently a Research Collaborator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and will be joining us next year. She is a plant ecologist who investigates the response of plants and plant communities to environmental changes and their evolutionary consequences in the Late Paleozoic.

And farewell to others …
Nick Pyenson decided to decline an NSF Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship and is instead a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Liz Perotti is now a Research Associate at the University of Hawaii.

Congratulations!
To Sarah Amugongo, who was awarded a Leakey Foundation Baldwin Fellowship and a Wenner-Gren Foundation Wadsworth Fellowship for this academic year.

To Theresa Grieco, who passed her qualifying exam last spring!

To Leslea Hlusko, who has been promoted to Associate Professor in Integrative Biology and Associate Curator in UCMP.

To Randy Irmis, who will be starting in January as the new Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Utah Museum of Natural History and Assistant Professor at the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah.

To Karen Osborn, who was awarded a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship to support her work on the pelagic evolution project at Scripps.

To Kevin Padian, who received the 2008 Western Evolutionary Biologist of the Year award at the Western Evolutionary Biology meeting (WEB*2) held at UC Irvine in May.

	In May, Jann Vendetti received a Teaching Effectiveness Award from Graduate Division Associate Dean Joe Duggan.

To Alan Shabel and his wife Sophie on the birth of their son, Samuel Ansel Shabel, weighing in at 9 lbs. 9 oz!

To Jann Vendetti, who received a teaching award for Principles of Paleontology last spring. See the article on the UC Berkeley Graduate Division website for more on Jann's award.

News from our alums
UCMP and IB alumna Healy Hamilton makes news as a dedicated conservationist. Find the article, dated Sunday, June 8, on www.sfgate.com.

New funding to UCMP outreach efforts!
UCMP is pleased to announce the receipt of a $50,000 gift from The Whitman Institute to support regional and national efforts in the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) project.

UCMP also received a grant of $13,267 from the National Science Foundation to support a meeting of the newly formed Understanding Evolution Advisory Board. The meeting is scheduled for December.
 

Jan Vendetti photo by Peg Skorpinski, courtesy of the Graduate Division.