UPDATE: DEADLINE EXTENDED to Monday, February 23rd – due to the nationwide Airtable outage.

Now Accepting Applications for the Steve Meshnick Travel Award

Professor Steve Meshnick (UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health) was internationally recognized for his global work in understanding, preventing, and treating infectious diseases, particularly malaria and HIV/AIDS. Professor Meshnick was also instrumental to the creation of TriCEM and served in many roles within the center, bringing incredible insight, energy, and inspiration to our community of scientists. To honor his contributions and especially his dedication to graduate student training, TriCEM is excited to offer the Steve Meshnick Travel Award.

This Travel Award will support students to present their research or learn new methods that advance their research. Graduate students at any TriCEM-affiliated university with research in evolutionary medicine, including in global health or epidemiology, are eligible to apply for the Steve Meshnick Travel Award. Funds will support a student to attend a scientific conference or workshop in 2026 to present their research. Award amounts are available up to $2000. The research presented or covered in the workshop must engage with evolutionary medicine. While any conference or workshop is appropriate for this award, we encourage applicants to consider the annual meeting of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health (July 28-31).

Eligibility: To be eligible for this award, the applicant must be a Ph.D. student at Duke, NC A&T, NCCU, NC State, or UNC-Chapel Hill, with research relevant to evolutionary medicine. The applicant must be a current student and travel to the conference must take place before completion of the student’s degree.

To apply: Prepare the following components and submit the first 3 using this link:

A research statement that describes your research and how it aligns with evolutionary medicine, focusing on the research that you propose to present or the workshop topic. Limit 500 words.
A description of how you will benefit from attending the conference or workshop, including your professional development, networking, and how it will advance your research. Limit 500 words.
A budget justifying requested funds. Allowable expenses include conference/workshop registration fees, ground or air travel, lodging, per diem food expenses, or other costs directly related to conference workshop/attendance. TriCEM will award up to $2000, but budgets should list all anticipated expenses, even if they exceed $2000. If other funding sources will be supporting your participation in the conference/workshop, please ensure that they are also reflected in the budget.
An email from your advisor to Jennifer Hurtgen (jennifer.hurtgen@duke.edu) confirming that they are aware of and support your proposed participation in the conference and workshop, and outlining any additional funds that are available for your participation.

Applications for the Steve Meshnick Travel Award will be accepted through February 20th, 2026. We expect to announce the recipients by March 1.

Previous recipients:

2024: Sean Connelly, MD-PhD student in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and member of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Ecology Laboratory.
2024: Sara O’Malley, PhD student in the Environment program at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment.
2024: Tyler Barrett, PhD Candidate in Evolutionary Anthropology
2024: Lev Kolinksi, PhD Student in Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University
2023: Rachel Keener, PhD Student in the School of Medicine, Duke University
2022: Katherine McVay, PhD Student in Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University