Congratulations to Vince Smith of the National History Museum in London, the talented biodiversity bioinformatician with "Cybertaxonomist" on his business cards. Vince is the 2008 winner of the Ebbe Nielsen Prize, an award given by GBIF to "a researcher who is combining biosystematics and biodiversity informatics research in an exciting and novel way." And, it's not just a plaque and a handshake - the prize carries with it a cheque in the amount of 30,000 euros (which seems like something like 2 million U.S. dollars to those of us traveling abroad and dealing with the current exchange rates). Vince will use this money to help continue the work on his Scratchpads project, but I bet just a wee bit might go for a celebratory beer. Guess I can forgive him for swapping around his seminar date at the AMNH because of having to go to Tanzania to collect his prize as long as he buys a round for me when he does come to town.
3 comments:
Susan,
I'm sure Vince would love $US 2,000,000, but €30,000 is about $US 44,000 ($US 1 ≈ € 0.68). Still, nothing to be sneezed at, and well-deserved recognition for the world's first "cybertaxonomist".
Congrats Vince!
Who knows what will happen by the time November 10th rolls around! It's been a strange summer living in NYC - I feel like I'm in a giant European supermall with so many running around spending money like crazy. It's nice to have the economic boom and I like hearing so many languages every day - but leave some iPods for us! And it's become just about impossible for us to "cross the pond".
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