Press clip

The Monday paper did a short article on my recent award from the Society for Conservation Biology, now my friends are teasing me about autographs. I pitty celebrities!!

Student Award

The 21st Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservatiion Biology was concluded last Thursday in Port Elizabeth. The SCB is the biggest gathering of conservation biologists from across the global. This year it was attended by about 1700 delegates,with presentations runing into their hundreds. The exciting thing about the SCB is that, the 'who-is-who' of conservation biology is usually there, and there is also a large contingent of students.

The highlight of the conference for me was the award ceremony. Each year the SCB recognises distinguished conservation scientists and organisations. They also organise a student competition, where twelve students are selected to compete for award of the best student presentation. Its a very competitive award process where students abstracts are subjected to rigorous examination by a panel of experts prior to the conference. And then during the conference another panel of experts judge the students presentations based on scientific rigour of the paper, conservation relevance of the issue and the student's presentation skills.

This year I managed to qualify as a student finalist. I have to say that I was rather surprised, because at the 2005 SCB conference in Brazil I had applied but never got nominated despite having put a lot of effort in preparing that paper.

Knowing very well that this is a very competitive process the least thing I expected was to scoop the award. Anyhow, I was awarded the 3rd PRIZE for the best student oral presentation.

It felt really nice, considering that all the students competing gave really good talks, and the fact that I was the first to present and therefore had to set the standard.

But the really important thing about the award is the fact that my work was subjected to peer review. It is a real morale booster to know that one is not just doing crap but making meaningful contribution to science.