John Maynard Smith Prize 2020
Every year the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) distinguishes an outstanding young evolutionary biologist with a prize named after John Maynard Smith (1920 – 2004), eminent scientist, great mentor, author of many books on evolution, and a former President of ESEB.
The prize is open to any field of evolutionary biology. The candidates for the 2020 prize must have begun their PhD study after January 1, 2013. In addition, nominees will be considered who are more than 7 years from the start of their PhD, if they have had career breaks taken for family, caring or health reasons; the nature of the reason must be given. The nomination of the candidate may be by a colleague or self-nominated. The nominations should be sent as a single PDF file to Ute Moniatte at the ESEB office, <office@eseb.org>. The nomination should include a brief justification, the candidate’s CV and list of publications (indicating three most significant papers), a short description of future research plans, and a letter from the candidate approving the nomination. A letter of reference from another colleague (or two in case of self-nomination) should be sent directly to Ute Moniatte.
Nominations and letters of support should arrive no later than January 17, 2020. Please take care to limit the size of attachments (total < 10 MB) in any one email.
The nomination committee, chaired by the ESEB Vice President Sara Magalhães, will evaluate the nominations and inform the winner approximately by the end of February 2020.
The prize winner is expected to attend the ESEB congress in August 2021 in Prague, Czech Republic, where he or she will deliver the 2020 John Maynard Smith Lecture. The Society will cover registration, accommodation, and travel expenses (economy fare). The JMS Prize comes with a monetary prize of 2500.- Euro, the invitation to write a review for the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, and the possibility of a Junior Fellowship of generally 6 months at the Institute of Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, Germany. For more information on the Institute of Advanced Study see www.wiko-berlin.de/en/.
Previous winners of the JMS Prize are listed at the ESEB web site: www.eseb.org.