LATEST NEWS

The Environmental Impacts and Sustainability Committee develops guidelines and recommendations to reduce the environmental footprint of SSE activities, including conferences and Society networks, and to support sustainable research practices across the field. 

Committee terms are for three years and begin January 1. Applications are due August 21, 2026.

Log in with your SSE username and password to access the application.

Activities 
The committee works to balance the Society’s scientific mission with its environmental  responsibilities by addressing the impacts of travel, resource and plastic consumption, and other  Society activities. It takes a global perspective, extending beyond the in-person meeting  footprint alone. Where appropriate, the committee integrates sustainability considerations into  Society awards, rubrics, and proposal processes, while recognizing that not all research  programs directly engage with sustainability issues. The committee also promotes awareness  and engagement through symposia, resource sharing, and highlighting members who  incorporate sustainability into their research and outreach. 

In its first year, the committee will establish its membership and formal charge and pursue one  concrete, achievable goal — such as collecting data on travel-related environmental impacts — to guide future recommendations and actions. Continue reading to learn more.

Six SSE committees are currently seeking new members to serve beginning January 1, 2027! Serving on a committee is a great way to get more involved in SSE, provide input on current activities and propose new ideas, and engage with the broader evolutionary biology community. New for 2027 is the Environmental Impacts and Sustainability Committee.

All committee terms are three years. You must be an SSE member to apply. Each committee is open to all career stages except for the Graduate Student Advisory Committee. Follow the links below and log in with your SSE username and password if prompted to access the applications. Each application requires a short statement of interest. 

Deadline: Friday, August 21, 11:59 PM Eastern

 
Access, Inclusion, and Community (AIC) Committee
The SSE AIC Committee promotes an inclusive environment to enhance the field of evolutionary biology and foster the career of its developing scientists.

> Apply for the AIC Committee


 
Education and Outreach Committee
The Education and Outreach Committee is responsible for the Undergraduate Community at Evolution program, the T. H. Huxley Award, the Small Grants Program for Local and Regional Outreach, and the Education Symposium at the Evolution meeting. 

> Apply for the Education and Outreach Committee

 
 
Environmental Impacts and Sustainability Committee
The Environmental Impacts and Sustainability Committee develops guidelines and recommendations to reduce the environmental footprint of SSE activities, including conferences and Society networks, and to support sustainable research practices across the field. 

> Apply for the Environmental Impacts and Sustainability Committee

 

Graduate Student Advisory Committee
The Environmental Impacts and Sustainability Committee develops guidelines and recommendations to reduce the environmental footprint of SSE activities, including conferences and Society networks, and to support sustainable research practices across the field. The Graduate Student Advisory Committee (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 become a source of information for students to use both during their graduate school career and as they make career transitions.

> Apply for the Graduate Student Advisory Committee


 
International Committee
The International Committee's mission is to foster international relationships between evolution societies and its members with particular focus on students and early-career scientists.

> Apply for the International Committee


 
Public Policy Committee
The Public Policy Committee advises the Council on issues of science and public policy. The Public Policy Committee monitors changes to policies and laws that impact evolution as a field, the support of scientific research, and/or the research of SSE members.

> Apply for the Public Policy Committee

Congratulations to this year’s recipient of the W. D. Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation, Princeton Vaughn! Vaughn’s winning talk was titled “Understanding the basis of adaptation to hurricanes in a Neotropical lizard,” presented during the virtual Hamilton Award symposium as part of the annual Evolution meeting. Watch Vaughn’s talk on YouTube.

The Hamilton Award Committee is pleased to recognize two Honorable Mentions for this award: Savanna Brown, who presented “Morphological marvels: Evolutionary origins and developmental repatterning of the treehopper helmet,” (watch Brown’s talk) and Gabrielle Welsh, who presented “How parasitoids and relaxed preferences facilitate the evolution of novel signals in a rapidly evolving field cricket” (watch Welsh’s talk).

SSE is raising funds to expand the SSE Graduate Research Excellence Grants (GREG) program, which provides graduate students around the globe with not only funds for research, but also the confidence, skills, and experience to help launch them into a future career in evolutionary biology. 

Previous recipient Daniel Vásquez-Restrepo explains: “This award represents more than financial support: it has enabled me to generate key microCT data for my doctoral research, while also providing something equally valuable, a vote of confidence. That encouragement, that sense that someone believes in your science, can make all the difference for a young researcher.”

This year, with additional revenue from our society-owned journals Evolution and Evolution Letters, we can award up to 50 grants. But with current and increasing cuts to science funding and academic opportunities, we want to provide even more support for students. Our goal is to expand this year’s GREG program by 20 percent. All donations go directly to supporting students at a critical time in their career. 

Donate or share the campaign with your network. Thank you for your support!

The SSE Huxley Award Committee is pleased to announce the winner of the 2026 T. H. Huxley Award, Mr. Matheus Januario Lopes de Sousa, PhD Candidate at University of Michigan, for the educational resource “evolved: an open-source R package designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate instruction in evolutionary biology.” This resource implements tutorials with explicit learning objectives focused on developing skills in data visualization, hypothesis testing, and simulation-based reasoning using real-world datasets within an inquiry-based framework, enabling students to investigate both microevolutionary processes (e.g., selection and drift) and macroevolutionary patterns using molecular and fossil data.

This work was done by Mr. Januario Lopes de Sousa in collaboration with Jennifer P. Auler, Andressa L. Viol, and Daniel L. Robosky. 

As part of the award, Matheus will receive funding to present his work at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in October. 

The T. H. Huxley Award is administered by the T. H. Huxley Award Committee, a subset of the SSE Education and Outreach Committee. 

SSE Council is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award, Dr. Samuel M. Scheiner. Dr. Scheiner was selected for the impacts and breadth of his work as a researcher and a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation, as well as his service to the biology community.

In his research, Dr. Scheiner made significant and foundational contributions to our understanding of phenotypic plasticity. He is well known for expanding our understanding of how genetic and environmental factors shape phenotypic variation. His experimental work demonstrated that plasticity is a heritable trait capable of evolving in response to natural selection. He also developed a diversity of influential models describing the genetics and evolution of plasticity under different conditions. His highly cited 1993 review, “The genetics and evolution of phenotypic plasticity” is required reading for all interested in this topic.

Dr. Scheiner worked as a Program Officer in the Evolutionary Processes program at the National Science Foundation for twenty-six years. During that time, he managed thousands of proposals and hundreds of awards, participated in more than one hundred and thirty review panels, and mentored countless researchers at all career stages.

In addition to his research and work at NSF, Dr. Scheiner has had a lasting impact through service. He served on the SSE Education and Outreach Committee for twenty-three years and the Gould Prize Committee for its first five years. He is one of the creators of SSE’s W. D. Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation at the annual Evolution meeting. At the American Society of Naturalists, he created the Ruth Patrick Award for best poster at the Evolution meeting.

Dr. Scheiner will present his work during the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award talk during the virtual portion of the Evolution meeting on May 20-22.
  

Congratulations to the two winners of this year’s SSE Presidents’ Award for Outstanding Dissertation Paper, Amor Damatac II and Jan Laine! Continue reading to learn more about their respective papers.

Amor Damatac II was selected for the paper "Evolutionary trends in the emergence of skeletal cell types" in Evolution Letters. Damatac will present one of the SSE Presidents’ Award talks at the virtual Evolution meeting this May.

Jan Laine was selected for the paper "Ancient stickleback genomes reveal the early stages of parallel adaptation" in Evolution. Laine will present one of the SSE Presidents’ Award talks at the virtual Evolution meeting this May.

The SSE Presidents are pleased to announce two Honorable Mentions for this year’s award: 

Skyler Berardi for the paper, "Drosophila melanogaster pigmentation demonstrates adaptive phenotypic parallelism over multiple spatiotemporal scales" in Evolution Letters, and Miles Roberts, for the paper "k-mer-based diversity scales with population size proxies more than nucleotide diversity in a meta-analysis of 98 plant species" in Evolution Letters. 

Learn more about their papers.

This monthly series, hosted by SSE President Dr. Gina Baucom, consists of conversations with members from several facets of the evolutionary biology community. Throughout 2026, videos will be released monthly with transcripts available on the website. In this interview, Dr. Claire Horner-Devine (Counterspace Consulting) discusses what career coaching is and how it can help academics. 

Watch the video or read the interview here.

SSE Presidential Symposium –  Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology

May 21, 9:15 AM - 12:30 PM
This year’s SSE Presidential Symposium will consist of two linked sessions designed to address the current climate of uncertainty surrounding federal funding and its implications for evolutionary biology. Together, these sessions are designed to move from personal grounding to community-level strategy, offering both immediate support and longer-term vision.

Part 1: Recommendations for the Community

Lightning Talks from Past SSE Presidents and Leaders in the Field
May 21, 9:15 AM - 10:30 AM EDT

This session will feature past SSE Presidents and leaders in the field, each giving a 5-minute lightning talk offering concrete, actionable ideas for maintaining research programs, supporting trainees, and strengthening the field during periods of funding constraint. The emphasis will be on practical recommendations at multiple scales—individual researchers, departments, universities, the society, and the field as a whole. There will be a 30-minute Q&A following the talks.

Prothama Manna
Postdoctoral Fellow at Clemson University, SSE GSAC Chair
“What Trainees Need in Uncertain Times: Paths to Resilient Science”

Mohamed Noor
Executive Vice Provost and Professor of Biology at Duke University, 2014 SSE President and former Evolution Editor-in-Chief
“How to ask for help in uncertain times”

Ruth Shaw
Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, 2020 SSE President and former Evolution Editor-in-Chief
“Realigning scholarly evaluation to support scientists' agency”

Joseph Graves
MacKenzie Scott Endowed Professor of Biology at NC Agricultural and Technical State University
“What Departments Can/Must Do to Support Junior Faculty in an Anti-Science Climate”

Scott Edwards
Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Ornithology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, 2012 SSE President
“Make your science indispensable: expanding your network and showcasing your research”

Emily Josephs
Associate Professor in Plant Biology, Assistant Professor in Ecology, Evolution & Behavior, Faculty in Genetics & Genome Sciences Program, and Assistant Professor in BioMolecular Science Gateway at Michigan State University
“A snapshot of current US federal science funding”

Alison Davis Rabosky
Director of the Museum of Zoology; Associate Professor; and Associate Curator in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan
“Museums as a vehicle of hope”

Part 2: Recommendations for the Individual

Interactive Workshop Led by Leadership Coach Nélia Viveiros
May 21, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDT

Led by leadership coach Nélia Viveiros, EdD, LLB, this session will focus on how scientists can respond constructively, creatively, and sustainably in the face of instability. The presentation and breakout rooms will provide participants with tools for managing uncertainty, maintaining clarity of purpose, and identifying personal strategies for resilience and forward movement. 

The SSE Gould Prize Committee is pleased to announce Dr. Neil H. Shubin as the 2026 recipient of the Stephen Jay Gould Prize. Dr. Shubin was selected for both his exceptional record of research and his influential work in advancing public understanding of evolution. Dr. Shubin will present the Stephen Jay Gould Plenary Public Lecture at the 2026 Evolution meeting on June 20th in Cleveland, OH.

Read more about his work.

Dobzhansky Prize Winner: Dr. Wendy Valencia-Montoya

Congratulations to this year's Dobzhansky Prize winner, Dr. Wendy Valencia-Montoya! Dr. Valencia-Montoya is a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her current research program investigates the molecular basis of specialized species interactions, such as how signals and senses evolve to enable communication between organisms, as well as the molecular pathways that confer resistance in species that have adapted to feed on highly neurotoxic plants. This work brings together evolutionary biology, sensory physiology, and comparative genomics to understand how organisms adapt to rapidly changing environments and how sensory innovations arise. Dr. Valencia-Montoya completed her PhD at Harvard University in 2025. Learn more about her work.

Dr. Valencia-Montoya will present the Dobzhansky Prize talk during the in-person portion of the Evolution meeting in Cleveland, OH in June.

Dobzhansky Prize Honorable Mention: Dr. Sean Anderson

Congratulations to this year’s Honorable Mention for the Dobzhansky Prize, Dr. Sean Anderson! Dr. Anderson is an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research seeks to understand speciation and the evolution of coexistence between close relatives. This work blends computational biology with field biology and evolutionary ecology with evolutionary genetics, and integrates data from birds to terrestrial vertebrates to wild African drosophila species pairs. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto in 2022 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until 2024. Learn more about his work.

Professor Maurine Neiman has spent her career expanding access and inclusion in the evolutionary biology community worldwide. Her impact through science advocacy and communication has been broad and sustained. She has paired her scientific expertise with public-facing vaccine education, helping bring clear, evidence-based messages to wide audiences. She has also used major editorial platforms to open doors for more people to participate fully in our field. As an editor at the Royal Society’s Proceedings B, Dr. Neiman helped build practices that widen participation in publishing and professional networks, with particular attention to creating meaningful opportunities for early-career scientists internationally. Across all of her efforts, she has been a visible, effective champion for a more welcoming and accessible evolution community—one where more scientists can contribute, be heard, and thrive.

Dr. Neiman will present her work during the IDEA Award Plenary at the virtual portion of the Evolution 2026 meeting on May 20-22, 2026.