Home Wing Beat 2020 Miller Award Winner: Erica Nol
2020 Miller Award Winner: Erica Nol
Over the course of this spring and summer, we're highlighting all of the previously announced recipients of this year's AOS awards on the blog. This week, the 2020 Loye and Alden Miller Research Award.
The Loye and Alden Miller Research Award is given for lifetime achievement in ornithological research. Loye Holmes Miller and his son, Alden, left a remarkable legacy to the field of ornithology. Together they mentored 30 Ph.D. students, 28 in avian biology, and their students went on to train in turn a total of 166 scientists. Alden served as a long-standing editor of The Condor during his distinguished career at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. This year, AOS is pleased to honor Erica Nol as the recipient of 2020's Loye and Alden Miller Research Award.
Dr. Nol is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia. She has spent most of her career working at Trent University, with a research program in arctic and boreal ecosystems across Canada. She also has an international reputation for her work on the ecology and conservation of migratory shorebirds and songbirds in the Western Hemisphere. Her dissertation work on American Oystercatchers still stands as the classic study for the species. She and her graduate students have worked at sites across the Canadian Arctic as well as in Georgia, Patagonia, and South Carolina. She is perhaps best known for her long-term field studies of Semipalmated Plovers in northern Manitoba. Her current work examines the effects that warming climates have on arctic and subarctic breeding shorebirds. Dr. Nol has also had a major research focus on forest birds, including examining avian responses to forest fragmentation, forestry practices, and urbanization. Dr. Nol's publication record includes over 160 peer-reviewed publications, including top-cited work in The Auk, Conservation Biology, Ecological Applications, Journal of Animal Ecology, and Oecologia.
Dr. Nol has been a fixture in AOS, Society of Canadian Ornithologists (SCO-SOC), and Waterbird Society councils and committees for decades, and served as President of both the SCO-SOC and the Waterbird Society. Dr. Nol was elected as a Fellow of AOS in 2001, and she currently serves on AOS Council. Her service to the ornithological community also includes helping to develop national and international shorebird conservation plans and establishing the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Research Group. Dr. Nol's legacy includes maintaining a large and productive lab, where she has mentored more than 60 graduate students who are now working in a diversity of fields in ecology.
For her lifetime contributions to the profession of ornithology and to our knowledge of migratory shorebirds, AOS is proud to present the 2020 Loye and Alden Miller Research Award to Dr. Erica Nol.
2020 Schreiber Award Winner: Jaime Collazo
2020 Jenkinson Award Winner: Michael Butler
2020 Stettenheim Award Winner: Susan Haig
Tags: erica nol, field biology, miller award, ornithology, research, women in ornithology