Submission deadline: Wednesday, April 12, 2023
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 many roles within the organization, bringing his characteristic insight, energy, and inspiration to our community of scientists. To honor his contributions to TriCEM and specifically his dedication to graduate student training, we are proud to offer the Steve Meshnick Travel Award again in 2023. Funds may be used to attend a conference to present research, or to attend a workshop or other training opportunity. Award amounts are available up to $1500. Graduate students at any TriCEM-affiliated university who conduct research on the evolution or ecology of infectious disease are eligible to apply for the Steve Meshnick Travel Award.
Eligibility:
To be eligible for this award, the applicant must be a graduate student at Duke, NC A&T, NCCU, NC State, or UNC-Chapel Hill with research relevant to infectious disease and evolution, including in global health or epidemiology. The applicant must be a current graduate student and all awarded funds must be used prior to completion of the student’s degree.
To apply:
The application consists of four parts:
- A research statement that describes your research and how it aligns with the award criteria. The research statement should clearly demonstrate that your work is on infectious diseases and how evolutionary perspectives are incorporated to fit within an evolutionary medicine framework. Limit 500 words.
- A description of the conference or training workshop you plan to attend using these funds and how you will benefit from receiving this award. Please discuss the conference or workshop in terms of both how it will enhance your professional development 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 at most $1500, but budgets should list all anticipated expenses, even if they exceed $1500. If other funding sources will be supporting your participation in the conference/workshop, please ensure that they are also reflected in the budget.
- A letter of recommendation from the applicant’s faculty advisor/ PI. The letter of recommendation will be submitted separately by the faculty advisor, but must also be received by the proposal deadline of Wednesday, April 12th, 2023. Faculty letters of recommendation should be emailed to Johnny Uelmen (johnny.uelmen@duke.edu) in PDF format by the applicant’s advisor/ PI.
Applications for the Steve Meshnick Travel Award will be accepted through Wednesday, April 12th, 2023 via this form. For submission, applications addressing the first three criteria above should be uploaded in a single PDF file (with the exception of the letter of recommendation submitted as described above) that follows the naming format “LastName_FirstName.pdf.” Applications that exceed the word count limit in parts 1 or 2 will be returned without review. We expect to announce the recipient in early May 2023.
Previous recipients:
- 2023: Rachel Keener, PhD Student in the School of Medicine, Duke University
- 2022: Katherine McVay, PhD Student in Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University
