The IUSSI-NAS Awards Committee is very pleased to announce the spring 2026 award winners, and the number of travel awards in support of travel to the XX International Congress of the IUSSI in Freiburg this summer.
Earlier in the spring, we were able to award a total of 16 travel awards for the upcoming IUSSI International Congress. This healthy number of awards was made possible by combining society funds with additional support from IUSSI International, and a dedicated donation from Dr. Walter Tschinkel to support three additional travel awards.
The annual spring awards saw record numbers of applications in recent memory, and after much deliberation, the very worthy award winners are as follows:
The Robert L. and Louise B. Jeanne Social Wasp Research Grant was awarded to Samir Kuinkel to investigate “Thermal vulnerability in sympatric urban Polistes“.
The Charles Michener Bee Research Grant went to Sheila Shu-Laam Chan to address” Work harder or work smarter? Foraging effort and efficiency in bumblebees”.
The William L. and Ruth D. Nutting Termite Research Grant was awarded to Joanne Tzu-Chia Chen, who will be “Investigating a potential ring species: Reticulitermes hesperus species complex in California”.
This year we were able to award two Tschinkel Ant Natural History Research Grants. The first went to Anoushka Dasgupta, for work on “Characterizing food loads and food retrieval strategies – The natural history of cooperative transport in the Australian weaver ant, Oecophylla smaragdina“. The second award went to Alison Pagalilauan, who will be “Investigating how diet, foraging, and brood care underlie Cyphomyrmex rimosus yeast agriculture”.
Finally, The Mary Jane West-Eberhard Best Paper Award went to Giacomo Glotzer for the publication “Transcriptional interference gates monogenic odorant receptor expression in ants” (Glotzer et al., Transcriptional interference gates monogenic odorant receptor expression in ants, Current Biology. (2025), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.09.026).
Thank you to all applicants and congratulations to all of our awardees.
Best wishes,
Scott Powell (on behalf of the IUSSI-NAS Awards Committee)
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