This committee is responsible for the administration and selection of student and postdoc travel awards and student presentation awards. The committee’s goal is to enable broader participation in ornithological conferences and events and to enrich the conference experience of those attending through the provisioning of feedback and the celebration of excellence.
Matt Carling | Co-chair
Associate Professor and Curator of Vertebrates, University of Wyoming (U.S.A.)
Matt’s research focuses on understanding the patterns and processes of adaptive evolution and speciation in birds. Matt has served on the Student Travel and Presentations Award Committee of the American Ornithological Society since 2014. Find Matt on Twitter at @mattdcarling.
Morgan Tingley | Co-chair
Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut (U.S.A.)
Morgan’s research combines original data collected in the field with ecological big data and hierarchical modeling to understand how large-scale anthropogenic drivers of change (e.g. climate change, invasive species, fire) affect geographic distributions and community interactions over short (years) to long (centuries) timespans. He has served on the Student Travel and Presentations Award Committee of the American Ornithological Society (AOS) since 2016. Find Morgan on Twitter at @mwtingley.
Theresa Burg
University of Lethbridge, Alberta (Canada)
Theresa uses molecular markers to study various evolutionary and ecological aspects of natural populations and how they relate to physical and non-physical barriers. Much of her research focuses on vertebrates examining a range of topics from mating systems, hybridization, population structure, and systematics.
Andrew Dobson
President, Birds Caribbean (Bermuda/UK)
Andrew has recently retired from a teaching career in the UK and Bermuda. He received his BA from the University of East Anglia (UK) and MBA in Educational Management from the University of Leicester (UK). He served on the executive of the Bermuda Audubon Society from 1990-2018, including many terms as President. During that period, he edited the Society’s newsletter, developed their website, ran birdwatching courses, led numerous field trips including an annual bird camp, and coordinated the annual Christmas Bird Count. He continues to review Bermuda records for eBird. He has been a regional editor for West Indies and Bermuda in the journal North American Birds since 1995. He is in his second term as President of Birds Caribbean and has helped coordinate events celebrating the Caribbean Endemic Bird Festival and International Migratory Bird Day in Bermuda. In 2002, his Birdwatching Guide to Bermuda was published.
Mary Garvin
Professor, Oberlin College (U.S.A.)
Mary is a member of the Biology faculty at Oberlin College, where she studies the ecology of avian disease. Her current focus is the role of bird preen gland secretions as chemical cues perceived by mosquito vectors of disease. Past work also includes viral recrudescence and the transmission and physiological cost of protozoan blood parasites for passerines. At Oberlin she teaches Genetics, Evolution, and Ecology; Disease Ecology; Invertebrate Biology; and the Natural History of the Vermilion River Watershed. She studied for her B.A. Biology and Education at Hiram College, M.S. Zoology at Louisiana State University, and Ph.D. Infectious Disease at University of Florida.
Dorothy Hill
Associate Professor Mount Royal University in Calgary (Canada)
Dorothy is a council member of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists/Société des ornithologistes du Canada (SCO-SOC) and serves as the Chair of SCO-SOC Early Career Researcher Award Committee and a member of the Student Awards Committee. She teaches courses in conservation biology, ecology, and the biology of sex. Her research interests include grassland bird conservation, conservation-focused citizen science, and the evolution of parental care.
Alejandro Salinas-Melgoza
Associate Professor, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo (Mexico)
Alejandro is a Mexican ornithologist who has mostly dedicated his professional career to the study of parrots in tropical western Mexico. His interests are wide and include understanding the breeding ecology of birds, especially parrots. Understanding the feeding ecology of birds and how it is related to movements and fluctuations in bird numbers is of particular interest to him. He is also interested in vocal communication in animals and how it may enable individual discrimination.
Dennis Siegfried
Professor, Southwest Baptist University (U.S.A.)
Dennis’s main research areas focus on avian landscape ecology and predicting nesting locations based on land-cover and weather data. He also works on a niche overlap site for Barn Swallows and Striated Swallows in TaiChung, Taiwan.
Angela Tringali
Research Fellow, Archbold Biological Station (U.S.A.)
Originally from New York, Angela received her BS from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and earned her PhD at the University of Central Florida. Angela’s interests are in behavioral ecology and conservation biology. Her research includes investigations of the impact of urbanization on status signaling and studies of social behavior.
Jennifer Walsh-Edmond
Postdoctoral Fellow, Fuller Evolutionary Biology Lab, Cornell Lab of Ornithology (U.S.A.)
Jen’s research combines ecological and genomic data to understand the mechanisms driving adaptation and diversification of birds along freshwater-saline gradients. She has served on the Student Travel and Presentation Award Committee of the American Ornithological Society (AOS) since 2019.
North American Ornithological Conference 