Winners of the 2021 GSA GBGM Division Student Presentation Awards

It is our pleasure to announce the winners of the GSA 2021 student presentation awards. We were all so impressed with the quality of presentations by our student members! Picking winners this year was not an easy job.

We would also like to express our deepest gratitude to our members who judged this year's competition. Without your feedback and support, this endeavor would not be possible. 

To all of our students, congratulations on presenting at GSA this year. All of the excellent entries from you all truly made choosing winners difficult, but here are the students who will receive awards and honorable mentions this year:

Best oral presentation winners:

Karen Pham: "Impacts of Miocene climate change on palm trait evolution in Madagascar and mainland Africa"

Katherine Turk: "Priapulid trace fossils from the late Ediacaran of Namibia"

Best poster presentation winners:

Martin Fernandez: "Preliminary investigations into ecology and functional morphology of the annulated orthoconic cephalopod Spyroceras"

Hannah Hogan: "Provenance of volcanogenic sediments in Wuchiapingian and earliest Changhsingian strata at Penglaitan"

Andrei Olaru: "Functional morphology of the Ediacaran organism Tribrachidiium heraldicum revealed by computational fluid dynamics"

Honorable mentions:

Andres Marquez (poster presentation): "Comparing the hypoxia tolerance and temperature sensitivities of Paleozoic and Modern marine fauna"

Jack Shaw (oral presentation): "Reassessing Burgess Shale trophic structure"

As with previous years, we will be handing out prizes to our award winners at GBGM awards luncheon next year at GSA 2022.

We'd like to thank all of the students who contacted us and put their names forward for consideration. It was a real privilege to see and hear about the work you've been doing, and we encourage you to enter again next year. Recognizing the excellent work of our members is the most important aspect of the GBGM division, so please stay in touch. It is wonderful to see the faces of the student population of GSA GBGM and there is a bright future ahead for this group!