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Deadline for Nominations: June 3, 2018 11:59 PM EST

The Conveners of the 2018 Astrobiology Graduate Conference and the Berkeley SETI Research Center are proud to announce the creation of a new early career community service award in honor of Maggie C. Turnbull, the founder of the Astrobiology Graduate Conference.

About Dr. Maggie C. Turnbull:
Dr. Margaret “Maggie” Turnbull is an astrobiologist whose expertise is in identifying planetary systems that may be capable of supporting life as we know it. As a part of her dissertation, Maggie developed the Catalog of Habitable Stellar Systems (HabCat) with Jill Tarter for use in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). She is currently leading science teams nationwide to develop NASA missions to discover planets beyond our solar system. In 2004 Dr. Turnbull organized and convened the inaugural Astrobiology Graduate Student Conference on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tuscon, AZ; AbGradCon is now in its 14th year and serves as a fundamental event for the early career astrobiology community. She continues to serve both science and the public through advocacy on Capitol Hill and serving as an elected official in her local community. On April 24, 2018 Dr. Turnbull announced her candidacy for Governor of Wisconsin.

About the Award & the 2018 Selection Process:
The purpose of this award is to honor those that exemplify the spirt of service within the early career astrobiology community. As this is a community award, the community will participate in the selection of the final candidate. Nominations will be accepted from members across the entire astrobiology community (self-nomination is not allowed) and then nominated candidates will be selected through a community online voting system. The nominees will be listed along with their nomination write-up on the AbGradCon website and community voting will commence during AbGradCon 2018. The awardee will be announced at the closing dinner of AbGradCon on Thursday June 7th, 2018. The awardee will be honored with a plaque and a monetary award of $1000.

Nominee Eligibility:
Nominees for this new award must be a graduate student or a post-doc (within 3 years of their PhD) who are actively working in the field of astrobiology.

Call for Nominations:
The call for nominations for candidates is open through June 3rd, 2018. The award committee asks that nominators send the name, title, and institutional affiliation of the nominee along with a brief nomination paragraph to Dr. Kennda Lynch (klynch31@gatech.edu) by 11:59 PM EST on June 3, 2018.