Twelve students from a pool of more than 700 applicants competed for the chance to win Best Student Talk at ICCB-ECCB in Montpellier, France.
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| Finalists for the ICCB-ECCB Student Awards Competition. |
The ICCB-ECCB Student Awards Competition took place on Monday 3 August. Finalists presented their talks in front of a panel of six judges in 15-minute increments. Each talk included a three-minute question and answer round with the judges. Talks covered a range of topics, inlcuding the role of genomics in informing conservation strategy, social values and and biodiversity conservation, mitigating the impact of roads on wildlife, and balancing food production with biodiversity conservation in Europe.
A clear first place winner did not emerge. Rather the judges named Paul Elsen (United States) and João Carlos Campos (Portugal) as joint 1st place winners. Paul's talk was entitled "Global mountain topography and the fate of montane species under climate change" and João's talk was "Derivation of a high resolution landcover map of the Western Sahara-Sahel transition zone for local biodiversity conservation."
Receiving honorable mention honors were Liam Bailey, Soraia Barbosa, Claire Feniuk, and Josil Philomena Murray. All twelve finalists were honored at the SCB Members Meeting, and each received a cash prize courtesy of Wiley, publisher of SCB's journals Conservation Biology and Conservation Letters.
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| SCB President James Watson congratulates ICCB-ECCB Student Award Winners João Carlos Campos and Paul Elsen at the SCB Members Meeting. |
A special thank you goes to the volunteer judges Caroloyn Lundquist, chair of the SCB Awards Committee, Mac Hunter, former president of SCB, Shonda Foster, coordinator of the Smith Fellows Program, Mark Burgman, editor-in-chief of Conservation Biology, Eddie Game, editor-in-chief of Conservation Letters, and Krithi Karanth, Asia regional editor for Conservation Biology and a former ICCB student award finalist (2008). SCB Europe Board Member Sarah Dalyrmple organized the contest and served as chair of the ICCB-ECCB Student Awards Committee.
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| Student award judges (l to r): Mac Hunter (former SCB president), Smith Fellows Coordinator Shonda Foster (middle, floor), Conservation Letters Editor Eddie Game, Sarah Dalrymple (SCB Europe), Carolyn Lundquist (Chair of Awards Committee), and Conservation Biology Editor Mark Burgman. |