I am overwhelmed and proud to share that I received the 2017 Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Research from UC-Davis! This university-wide award “recognizes the vital role that postdoctoral scholars play in maintaining the reputation of excellent research at UC Davis” and comes with a $1000 prize. Two winners are selected each year by a panel of professors, deans, and officers of the Postdoctoral Scholars Association. There are over 1,000 postdocs at UC-Davis, and this year, 15 postdocs were nominated, and Dr. Kimberly Keil and I were the awardees. (Interesting note: both of us and both of our mentors are all women! #womeninscience)

Left to right: My advisor Dr. Karen Bales, me, the other awardee Dr. Kimberly Keil, and her advisor Dr. Pam Lien.

It is an honor to receive this recognition for my hard work and effort, and I am so thankful to my mentor Dr. Karen Bales for nominating me, and for Dr. John Capitanio (UC Davis) and Dr. Suma Jacob (U of Minnesota) for writing letters in support of my nomination.

I also won Runner-Up for Best Oral Presentation in my session at the 3rd Annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium, held on the same day, for my talk entitled, “What do monogamous monkeys look at? Establishing non-invasive eye-tracking methods for the study of social cognition in nonhuman primates.”