Distinguished Career Award


The nominations for the Distinguished Career Award, will be solicited from current division members and be based, specifically, on sustained excellence in research, mentoring, service, and leadership for the geobiology and geomicrobiology community throughout the nominee’s career. From these nominations, the Division management board and appointed Division committee of awards will come to a consensus on the awardees. The awards will consist of both a plaque as well as an honorary membership to the division should the awardee not be a current member. The final award recipient names will be sent to GSA for ratification at the GSA Spring Council meeting.


2024 Distinguished Career Awardee:
Alan Jay Kaufman

Alan Jay Kaufman is a Professor of Geobiology and Geochemistry at the University of Maryland (UMD) where he has developed and maintained a stable isotope laboratory over the past 27 years.  Previous to his appointment at UMD, Kaufman completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees with John Hayes at Indiana University and then continued as a Post-doctoral Fellow and Research Scientist at Harvard University, collaborating with Andy Knoll, Stein Jacobsen, and Paul Hoffman.  Jay's research highlights the co-evolution of life and environment.  Through his field and laboratory focus on the stratigraphy, paleontology, and geochemistry of sedimentary rocks that accumulated across the most significant transitions in early Earth history, his integrated research has shed light on:

  • The Great Oxidation Event (when atmospheric oxygen rose dramatically some 2.3 billion years ago) and its biological consequences;
  • The extremes of climatic and environmental change associated with episodic Snowball Earth ice ages at both ends of the Proterozoic Eon;
  • The Ediacaran Period evolution of macroscopic life in the aftermath of one of the greatest recorded perturbation of the carbon cycle;
  • The shorter fuse for the Cambrian Explosion of Animals; and
  • The spread of euxinia in epicontinental seaways as the cause of Late Devonian mass extinctions. 

Kaufman's studies have carried him to far away places with strange sounding names, including Namibia, Siberia, Australia, and Brazil where his 2020-2022 Fulbright Global Scholar award supported the discovery of biomineralized sponge grade animals in both Cryogenian and Ediacaran strata associated with dramatic environmental changes in the world oceans.  Jay's has advised 18 M.S. and Ph.D. theses, over 30 B.S. senior theses, and more than 50 undergraduate laboratory assistants over his tenure at the University of Maryland.  He has been recognized for teaching at UMD, including the 2000 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the 2014 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, and the 2022 Board of Visitors Creative Educator Award.  In addition, Kaufman was a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Mercator Guest Professor in 2007-2008 and was inducted as a Geological Society of America Fellow in 2012.


Previous Awardees:
2023: Gabriela Mángano
2022: John Valley
2021: Frank Corsetti
2020: William M. Berelson and Kurt Konhauser
2019: Russell Shapiro
2018: Andrew Knoll
2017: Marilyn Fogel
2016: Dawn Sumner
2015: Elizabeth and Rudy Raff
2014: Shuhai Xiao
2013: Stan Awramik
2012: Jack Farmer
2011: Derek Briggs