Botstiber Foundation

Annie Rigby

BIWFC: Cheryl Asa Receives 2022 Trailblazer Award

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During the 9th International Conference on Wildlife Fertility Control, BIWFC Advisory Board and Conference Committee member Cheryl Asa was presented with the 2022 Trailblazer Award. This award recognizes and honors an individual who has had a profound impact on our field, one who has an exemplary reputation, and one who serves as a model, especially for emerging practitioners and researchers.

The name of this award is appropriate in both the figurative and literal sense. Cheryl has devoted 30+ years to research, writing, and teaching to advance an understanding of reproductive strategies, their differences and adaptive value. Cheryl established and served as director of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Reproductive Management Center, formerly the AZA Wildlife Contraception Center, for over 27 years. She concurrently directed the Saint Louis Zoo’s Reproductive and Behavioral Sciences Department.

For more than 20 years, Cheryl supervised 27 graduate and post-doctoral students and taught courses in Animal Behavior at Washington University and in Endocrinology and Behavioral Endocrinology at Saint Louis University. Cheryl has published 180 scientific articles, co-edited the book Wildlife Contraception: Issues, Methods and Application, and was lead author on the Fertility Control chapter of the National Academy of Sciences report on feral horse management.

Even in retirement, Cheryl continues to blaze trails in wildlife fertility control. In addition to her service to The BIWFC, she chairs the AZA Reproductive Management Center Advisory Board and is a Scientific Advisory Board member of the Found Animals Foundation and the Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs, as well as the IUCN Equid and Canid Specialist Groups. She also continues to run the gene banking program for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Mexican wolf recovery program.

Congratulations Cheryl!

To learn more, visit the BIWFC website.

BIWFC: Call for Papers

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Wildlife Research plans to publish a special issue on Wildlife Fertility Control in 2023.  We invite you to submit your best paper and publish alongside your colleagues in the field.  See details here. We are interested in receiving papers that engage with the following topics:

  • Human dimensions
  • Recent research in contraceptive development
  • Advancement in practical applications
  • Modelling the effect of fertility control on populations
  • Socio-economic aspects of fertility control applications
  • Ethics, health, & welfare
  • Advancement in delivery methods
  • Regulatory, legal, & political challenges

For additional information, please contact Giovanna Massei (gmassei@botstiber.org) or Stephanie Boyles Griffin (sboyles@humanesociety.org).  Submission deadline is July 30, 2022.

To learn more, visit the BIWFC website.

BIAAS: The Recharging Austrian-American Relations Conference

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The Recharging Austro-American Relations Conference asks scholars, together with commercial, cultural, and political leaders to open a discussion whose subject is the profound long-term relationship between Austria and the United States. Organized around four panels and two round tables, with topics ranging from restitution, economic history, culture, and high technology to Habsburg historiography and an assessment of the current predicament, the conference is both an ambitious, two-day review of Austro-American legacies, and a rare opportunity to consider globally-situated Austria and the United States in a bilateral context. “Recharging Austro-American Relations” is devoted to revisiting and learning from the past; it is an occasion to highlight new research; and it is an invitation to discuss what should come next. Jointly hosted by the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies (BIAAS) & the Diplomatische Akademie Wienin cooperation with the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation.

Where: Diplomatische Akademie Wien | Favoritenstrasse 15a, 1040 Vienna, Austria
When: June 9-10 with panels and lectures from 9:30am until 6:00pm

Know of an event, exhibit, or any relevant news that may be of interest to BIAAS subscribers and should be included in the next newsletter? Have an idea for a blog post, podcast episode, or video that supports our transatlantic mission? Please contact Program Officer Luke Morgante at Lmorgante@botstiber.org.

Botstiber Scholars Program: Congratulations to the Class of 2022

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The Botstiber Scholars Program at Penn State University is proud to announce the graduation of three of our scholars: Flavia Kung’u, Belinda Mativenga, and Joseph Tumwebaze.

All three students frequently received term honors and made Dean’s List. Congratulations to our graduating scholars on all their hard work and accomplishments. The Bostiber Foundation looks forward to hearing all about their future endeavors.

To learn more about the Botstiber Scholars Program, visit our Botstiber Scholars page.

Flavia Kung’u earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Economics. She also received a Presidential Leadership Academic Certificate. Outside of academics, Flavia recently joined the Eta Kappa Nu Association— a global organization dedicated to encouraging excellence in education for the benefit of the public. Flavia enjoys visiting the Arboretum, reading, and listening to country music.

Belinda Mativenga earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. She also received a Smeal College Business Fundamentals Certificate. She has accepted a full-time position as an Operations Analyst with Goldman Sachs, and will be relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Joseph Tumwebaze earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Sciences and Technology with a concentration in Information Technology Integration and Application. He has acccepted a full-time position with SalesForce, and will be relocating to San Francisco, California.

Botstiber: Edward Amoah in the News

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An international team led by Edward Amoah, a Botstiber Scholar and graduate student in Penn State’s intercollegiate ecology program PlantVillage, was selected as one of 23 teams to receive a $100,000 XPRIZE Carbon Removal Student Award.

PlantVillage has also most recently been awarded an additional $1m XPRIZE for carbon capture work in Africa. The prize, funded by Elon Musk, will be used by the team to demonstrate their capacity to draw down one billion tons of carbon per year in a sound and economically attractive way that benefits low-income farmers in Africa.

PlantVillage was founded as a means for bringing the latest and best Penn State research expertise into the hands of struggling farmers. One critical aim is to make carbon credits publicly verifiable, with real-time monitoring. Another is to raise 200 million farmers out of poverty in Africa by developing a new income stream for them to be paid by customers seeking carbon credits on the global market. The overall vision for the project is to empower these farmers to collectively pull down a billion tons of carbon dioxide every year by planting and growing trackable trees on their land, helping not only themselves but the global community as well.

For more information:

https://www.psu.edu/news/huck-institutes-life-sciences/story/ecology-grad-student-awarded-100k-xprize-carbon-removal/

https://www.psu.edu/news/huck-institutes-life-sciences/story/plantvillage-team-awarded-1m-elon-musk-xprize-carbon-removal/

Botstiber: 2022 Foundation Award

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Congratulations to James Lee of Cumberland County, New Jersey, winner of the 2022 Botstiber Foundation Award at Delaware Valley Science Fairs! James’ project, entitled “How Does the Wheel Orientation of a Holonomic Drive Affect a Robot’s Speed”, has potential applications in many areas including aviation and aeronautics. 

The Botstiber Foundation annually awards a student with an $8000 unrestricted scholarship, distributed at $2000 per year for four years pending maintenance of full-time status and a minimum of 3.0 GPA.

Founded in 1949, The Delaware Valley Science Fairs, Inc. is a non-profit organization sponsored by area companies, foundations, universities, and individual donors. The students are involved in sophisticated research projects that focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) topics in 13 different categories, Team Projects, and (for 6th – 8th grades) Consumer Science.

For more information: https://www.dvsf.org/