Student Award
Posted: Aug. 17, 2008

The Stephen J. O'Brien Award for the best student paper published in the Journal of Heredity the previous year is awarded at the annual meeting of the AGA and includes a cash prize of $1,000.  The award is intended to honor Dr. O'Brien's many years of exemplary service as Chief Editor of the Journal of Heredity.  Papers are eligible for the 2008 award if the first author was a registered student at the time of manuscript submission and if the article is published in Volume 99 of the Journal of Heredity.  Please contact the Managing Editor (agajoh@oregonstate.edu) regarding candidates.

See special announcement regarding the 2007 award recipients here and at http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/

Special Event Awards
Posted: Aug. 17, 2008

The American Genetics Association grants awards each year to AGA members for support of special events that further the purposes of the Association. Eligible events include specialized workshops open to Association members in areas of great current interest and short courses in some aspect of organismal genetics, but any event that would advance the purpose of the Association is eligible for support.

The AGA Council is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s Special Event Awards, approved at their June, 2008 meeting:

1. $12,500 to:  “Genome 10K- An initiative to assemble 10,000 vertebrate species’ bio-specimens suitable for whole genome DNA sequencing with advanced high-throughput sequencing technologies”
   
   David Haussler, Oliver Ryder, Stephen J. O’Brien
   
   
2. $18,000 to:  “The AGA/ Smithsonian sponsored: Short Training Course in Recent Advances in Conservation Genetics (ConGen-2010)”
   
   Stephen J. O’Brien, Warren Johnson, Jill Pecon-Slattery, Al Roca, Jennifer Troyer,  Bailey Kessing
   
   
3. $14,800 to:  “V taller latinoamericano de genética para la conservación: la ecología molecular al servicio de la conservación de especies silvestres “
   
   (The fifth Latin American conservation genetics workshop: Molecular ecology in the service of wildlife conservation)
   
   Kathryn M. Rodríguez-Clark, Marisol Aguilera, María A. Oliveira-Miranda, Angela M. G. Martino
   
   
4. $16,000 to: “Next Generation Sequencing In Non-Model Organisms”
   
   Rachael O’Neill and Linda Strasbaugh

AGA Council Elections 2008
Posted: Aug. 17, 2008

This year’s elections will be held online in early November.

AGA members please watch for an email or letter with the information you need to vote.

The procedure is simple: all AGA members will receive a membership number and a voting “token”, akin to a password, allowing them to register their vote, by email if we have your address.  Once the ballot opens, the election web site will show the slate of candidates with brief biographical statements and voting instructions.  The token ensures that each member votes only once, and that the results are submitted anonymously.  No paper ballots to send, no stamps to find, no anxiety about the vagaries of snail mail!

Make voting and AGA communications easier by sending your email address and subscription number to: jnls.cust.serv@oxfordjournals.org.   Oxford University Press will send only communications concerning the AGA or the Journal of Heredity.