The Award is given for an oral research presentation at the Annual Conference of the Society, and is intended to encourage and acknowledge excellence in scientific research and communication by Post-Doctoral Fellows.
Terms of Reference
Objectives
The Award is given for the best research talk at the Annual Conference of the Society, and is intended to encourage and acknowledge excellence in scientific research and communication by Post-Doctoral Fellows.
Award
Cash prize (currently $500) and a scroll.
Source of Prize
Funded through the CSZ.
Frequency of Availability
One per year. The Society reserves the right not to make this award if either the quantity or quality of applications is deemed insufficient.
Eligibility
All candidates must be active Post-doctoral fellows at the time of submission. They must clearly state that the research to be presented is conceived and conducted during the period of their Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Research Associates are considered eligible if they are no more than 5 years from the awarding of their PhD. Furthermore, a letter from the supervisor is required to confirm that the research is conducted primarily as part of their PDF program of research.
Application/Nomination Procedures
Candidates who have indicated their intention to enter the President’s Prize competition at registration will submit a regular abstract for their presentation following the guidelines and deadlines established by the local organizing committee (LOC) for the annual conference.
In addition, candidates must send to the First Vice-President an electronic file of a summary of the oral presentation before the award application deadline (see next section).
Talks in the competition may have multiple authors; however the competing PDF must be the first author, and is expected to have conducted the majority of the work during their time as a PDF. The Presidents’ award presentations usually focus on completed work of a high calibre: proposal talks are inappropriate.
The summary must not exceed two pages, including title, authors, and any figures. We do not prescribe all aspects of the format, but do recommend that any text be in 12-point font. The summary should include the objectives of the study, a brief description of the materials and methods, the results, conclusions and scientific relevance. The primary purposes of the summary are to place the contribution within the perspective of the discipline and to allow the selection of finalists when the number of applicants exceeds the capacity of the judging committee.
Application Deadline
Established by the First Vice-President in consultation with the LOC. The summary will be emailed to the First Vice-President no later than one week after the originally established “earlybird” abstract submission deadline for the Annual Conference (extensions to abstract submission deadline will not apply). Students should consult the Annual Conference website for specific dates.
Selection Procedures
The 1st Vice-President shall arrange a Committee of Judges consisting of members from the sections represented in CSZ. From the summaries submitted, the Committee of Judges will select a slate of 4-7 final contestants. The 1st Vice-President will usually make available the judging criteria to the applicants prior to the summary submission deadline. The Committee encourages participation from all zoological disciplines, but submissions will be judged solely on the basis of scientific merit. The authors of the selected summaries will present their research at the Annual Conference, usually in a plenary session. The Committee of Judges will select the PDF Award recipient by consensus on the basis of oral presentation and its scientific content. (To avoid conflicts-of-interest, the Committee of Judges for the oral presentations may have a different make-up to that which evaluated the summaries). Summaries that are not selected as final contestants will be scheduled in regular sessions of the Annual Conference without mention of their participation in the PDF Award Competition.
Other Conditions
These regulations shall be public and available to all competitors. A candidate may compete only once for the PDF Award at each Annual Conference. A candidate who has won the PDF Award is no longer eligible for the competition.
Awardees
2023 – Angelina Dichiera, University of British Columbia. Lessons from a long-lived fish: phenotypic flexibility in response to chronic thermal stress.
2022 – Y. Kevin Pan, University of Ottawa. Deciphering the oxygen signaling pathway in zebrafish from peripheral chemoreceptors to the central nervous system.
2021 – Brittney Borowiec, Wilfrid Laurier University. Effects of the lampricides TFM, niclosamide, and their mixture on mitochondria function in adult sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) at three environmentally-relevant temperatures.
2020 – Matthew Regan, University of Madison Wisconsin. Ground squirrels recycle urea-nitrogen during hibernation through gut microbial symbiosis.
2019 – Timothy M. Healy, University of California, San Diego. Genomic basis of mitonuclear breakdown in F2 hybrids of Tigriopus californicus.
2018 – Tamzin A. Blewett, University of Alberta. A Novel Pathway of Nutrient Absorption in Crustaceans: Branchial Amino Acid
Uptake in the Green Shore Crab (Carcinus maenas)
2017 – Heath A. McMillan, York University. How to minimize accidental leakage: Thermal acclimation mitigates cold-induced paracellular leak from the Drosophila gut.
2016 – Tomonari Kaji, University of Alberta. Evolutionary origin of “snapping” shrimps: crossing the gap between pinching and snapping claws.
2014 – Paul Craig, University of Ottawa.
2013 – Wai Man Kwong, University of Ottawa.
2012 – Aaron Schultz, University of Alberta.
2011 – Andrew Esbaugh, University of Miami. The physiological response of predicted future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide on respiratory gas exchange and acid-base balance in the gulf toadfish.