PRESENTATION OF THE 2020 ASHTON CUCKLER NEW INVESTIGATOR AWARD TO DR. SPENCER C. GALEN

The recipient of the 2020 Ashton Cuckler New Investigator Award is Dr. Spencer C. Galen, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Scranton. Dr. Galen received his Ph.D. in 2018 from the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History. He came to the Museum after obtaining a Master's Degree from the University of New Mexico, where he worked with Dr. Christopher Witt in the Museum of Southwestern Biology. An avid birder for his whole life, Dr. Galen was able to take his undergraduate degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Delaware and transition to the worlds of parasitology and ornithology, studying the ways in which birds and their malaria parasites adapt to high altitudes such as those in the Peruvian Andes. In his thesis work, Dr. Galen combined the use of collections, field work to obtain new samples, and modern molecular methods—a theme that...