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This April was the third annual meeting of the Manakin Genomics Research Coordination Network. This is a fantastic group of colleagues at all career stages and from various international institutions. We are studying all aspects of manakin behavior, ecology, genetics and evolution. This year we met in Gamboa, Panama. A website for this group is underway--stay tuned for that link!   I am very excited to share that I have successfully defended my PhD at the University of Maryland. After a brief hiatus from work, I will be starting a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, to continue my research in the molecular evolution of vision.
A recording of a lightning talk I gave at the Spring 2016 Senate of Scientists Symposium at the National Museum of Natural History (see my post from 4/20/2016) is available here. It is entitled "Evolving into the Night: Visual Adaptations to Nocturnality in Birds."  My most recent manuscript, "Ultraconserved Elements Resolve the Phylogeny of Potoos (Aves: Nyctibiidae)" has been published in the Journal of Avian Biology. Check it out here.   I am very excited to announce that I have been awarded a three-year postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation for my project entitled "Visual Adaptation to Nocturnality in Birds."
My manuscript "A Multi-Gene Estimate of Higher-Level Phylogenetic Relationships among Nightjars (Aves: Caprimulgidae)" has been accepted to Ornitología Neotropical! It is open access, and available here.  I am honored to accept the 2016 Student Research award from the University of Maryland BEES graduate program. This award was voted on by my peers, and makes winning all the sweeter! This award recognizes "outstanding research achievements in the field of behavior, ecology, evolution and/or systematics, and for contributing to the academic excellence of the program."  It can take hours to boil down your research into a 6-minute presentation suitable for both members of the public visiting the museum for the day, and curators that have worked there for more than 10 years. I was happy to do it for the 12th round of the Senate of Scientist Lightning Talks at the National Museum of Natural History on April 8th. Recordings of the presentations will be available on iTunesU 6 Minute Science Collection.  I was very excited to be a part of this year's Museum Day Live! at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. This year's events focused on women in the sciences, and events took place in museums across the country. I had a table set up in the Q?rius exhibition that featured coloring sheets for the little ones, bird skins from our collections, and an interactive phylogenetics exercise.
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