Mini-ARTS Awards

The Society of Systematic Biologists is pleased to offer Mini-ARTS awards to enhance taxonomic knowledge. These awards are for revisionary taxonomy and systematics, modeled after the NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Advancing Revisionary Taxonomy and Systematics (ARTS) developed within the Systematics and Biodiversity Science Cluster. We are calling these 'Mini-ARTS' grants. These awards are designed to allow SSB members (students, post-docs, and faculty) to spend a summer or semester apprenticed to an expert in a particular taxonomic group or to enhance revisionary taxonomic and systematics research in novel ways. Goals of this award program are to address constraints on our knowledge of undescribed biodiversity, assist in passing on taxonomic expertise before it is lost, increase the number of students with broad training in organismal biology and systematics, and support projects in biodiversity and taxonomy informatics as well as monographic and revisionary taxonomy. Activities can include a trip to the taxonomist's laboratory, pay for the taxonomist to visit the applicant's laboratory for a period of time, or pay for costs of computer time or development of interactive keys for electronic dissemination of systematics results. Requests for support may be in any amount up to $3,000. 

2018 Mini-ARTS Applications

This program will be announced soon!

Applicants may be from any country, but must be members of SSB, and are advised to join the Society as soon as possible to facilitate their applications. Use the button above to go to the application form.

Application materials required:
  • a curriculum vitae (1 page maximum)
  • a brief description of the project, including a separate section justifying the importance of the taxon and the revisionary work with literature cited (2 pages maximum) 
  • budget ($3,000 limit) and budget justification (2 page maximum)
All application materials must be submitted as a single PDF file using the application form given above.

Letters of support must be arranged from:
  • the taxonomic expert collaborator 
  • If the applicant is a student or post-doc, please also include a reference letter from the advisor

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact the Chair of the SSB Awards Committee (Dr. Tracy Heath: awards@systematicbiologists.org).

Recent Mini-ARTS Awardees

2017
  • Gema Alama-Bermejo, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina)
  • Nathalie Baena Bejarano, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Natalie Hamilton, The Ohio State University
  • Chelsea Pretz, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Salvatore Anzaldo, Arizona State University
  • Carmen Cobo, University of Santiago de Compostela
  • Ryan Fuller, University of Chicago
  • Gareth Powell, Brigham Young University
  • Nikolaos Schizas, University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez
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2016
  • Jaaziel E. Garcia-Hernandez, University of Puerto Rico
  • A.J. Harris, Smithsonian Institution
  • Dawson White, University of Illinois, Chicago
  • James Bernot, George Washington University
  • Guanyang Zhang, Arizona State University
  • Tania Pineda-Enriquez, University of Florida