There are two Excellence Awards: the Pre-tenure Excellence Award and the Post-Tenure Excellence Award. The nominations for the Pre- and Post-Tenure Awards will be solicited from current division members and be based, specifically, on excellence in research, mentoring, service, and leadership for the geobiology and geomicrobiology community (appropriate to the candidate’s position). 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.
2024 Pre Tenure Awardee: Nagissa Mahmoudi
Dr. Nagissa Mahmoudi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at McGill University. She combines experimental microbiology and molecular biology along with novel isotopic approaches to decipher what heterotrophic microbes are "eating" and understand the principles that underlie "why". Her work is important for understanding how microbes mediate the fate and transformation of organic compounds in coastal and marine environments. Recently, she has begun exploring the evolution of heterotrophic microbes and their impact on elemental cycling in the ancient oceans.
2024 Post Tenure Awardee: Eva Stueeken
Dr Eva Stueeken is a Reader (Associate Professor) in the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her research focuses on the origin and early evolution of life and implications for the habitability of other words. She uses a combination of field work in Precambrian terrains, analytical geochemistry, laboratory experiments, and simple models to reconstruct paleoenvironmental conditions, nutrient fluxes and metabolisms over Earth's history. A particular emphasis of her work has been on the biogeochemical nitrogen cycle, including the development of methods to track nitrogen from the atmosphere to the biosphere and into the deep crust. More recently, she has begun exploring speciation of phosphorus in the igneous and sedimentary rock record.
Previous Awardees:
Pre Tenure Award
2023: Kristen Bergmann
2022: Lidya Tarhan
2021: Kimberley Lau
2020: Emmy Smith
2019: Elizabeth Swanner
2018: Paula Welander and James Schiffbauer
2017: Christopher Reinhard
2016: Erik Sperling
2015: Arpita Bose
2014: Rob Sansom
2013: David Johnston
2012: Alexis Templeton
2011: David Fike
Post Tenure Award
2023: Colleen Hansel
2022: Cara Santelli
2021: Phoebe Cohen
2020: Gregory Dick
2019: Clara Chan
2018: Beth Orcutt
2017: Susannah Porter
2016: Tanja Bosak
2015: Tim Lyons
2014: Sara Pruss
2013: Kurt Konhauser
2012: Barbara Sherwood-Lollar
2011: James Hagadorn