PRESENTATION OF THE 2021 ASP ASHTON CUCKLER NEW INVESTIGATOR AWARD TO DR. KELLY SPEER

Fellow members and guests of the American Society of Parasitologists, it is with great pleasure that I present Dr. Kelly Speer with the American Society of Parasitologists' 2021 Ashton Cuckler New Investigator Award—a pleasure also shared by those who enthusiastically outlined her research excellence and contributions to ASP: Dr. Susan Perkins, Dr. Katharina Dittmar, and Dr. Stephen Greiman. Dr. Speer is currently a Biodiversity Genomics Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Museum of Natural History. Here she has been working with Dr. Anna Philipps, National Museum of Natural History, and Dr. Carly Muletz Wolz, the National Zoo's Center for Conservation Genomics, where she continues her innovative research in parasite/microbe community evolution utilizing genomic resources. Dr. Speer completed her Ph.D. at the Richard Gilder Graduate School of the American Museum of Natural History in September 2019 with advisors Dr. Susan Perkins and Dr. Nancy Simmons on “Sources of variation in the microbiome...