Jennifer Phillips successfully defended her PhD dissertation and graduated in spring 2016!  Her dissertation is entitled What is Gloger’s Rule? Studies of the Relationships Among Climate, Coloration and Life History in Birds.  Congrats, Dr. Phillips!

Congrats to grad student Allison Injaian for receiving the 2015 ARCS scholarship!  The ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) scholarship provides a stipend to select graduate students in the STEM fields, with the goal of advancing science and technology worldwide. Lab member Jennifer Phillips was an ARCS fellow in 2013 and 2014.

Congratulations to Alli also for receiving the UC Davis Graduate Studies Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award. This prestigious award recognizes  teaching excellence on the UC Davis campus and is given to only a few stellar TAs from across campus each year.

And finally, congrats on getting married this summer!

Conor Taff was awarded the Merton Love Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Ecology and Evolution at UC Davis, which goes to the student with the most outstanding PhD dissertation in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Davis each year.  Conor was also awarded the Cooper Ornithological Society Young Professional’s Award, which is given to two young scientists each year for outstanding research and contributions to the ornithological profession. To top off his winning streak, Conor was awarded the Animal Behavior Society Warder Clyde Allee Award for best paper and oral presentation by a finishing PhD student at the Animal Behavior Society meeting at Princeton University.  These are all the top awards given to young scientists in their fields.  Conor was awarded a PhD in Animal behavior in 2013 in the Patricelli Lab and is now a USDA postdoctoral fellow with Professor Andrea Townsend at UC Davis.