2021 AOS Early Professional Awards to Benjamin Van Doren, Ana Gonzalez, Sahas Barve, and Luis Sandoval

The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is pleased to announce Benjamin Van Doren, Sahas Barve, Ana Gonzalez, and Luis Sandoval as the 2021 recipients of the society’s Early Professional Awards: the James G. Cooper Early Professional Award and the Ned K. Johnson Early Investigator Award. First awarded in 2009, the James G. Cooper Early Professional Award recognizes early-career researchers (through the end of their third-year post terminal degree) for outstanding scientific research and contributions to the ornithological profession. Two James G. Cooper Early Professional Awards are being presented in 2021, one to Dr. Benjamin Van Doren and one to Dr. Ana Gonzalez. Dr. Van Doren studies global bird migration across scales, from individuals to continents, and his work spans ecology, evolution, behavior, and conservation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, where he studied drivers of change and flexibility in migratory behavior. As a postdoctoral associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, he focuses on leveraging complementary data sources to understand the dynamics of migration systems, including predicting large-scale migratory movements and mitigating negative impacts of human activity on migratory birds. His contributions as a science communicator to Birdcast.info have garnered more than two million views, his publications include three papers in The Auk (now Ornithology), and his service already includes more than 32 paper reviews for various scientific journals, all extraordinary achievements for Dr. Van Doren’s career stage. His publications have been characterized by exceptional quality and have already contributed to multiple areas of avian ecology and evolution, including migratory biology (Van Doren et al. 2017, Journal of Avian Biology), breeding biology (Van Doren et al. 2016, Behavioral Ecology; Van Doren et al. 2019, BBOC), conservation biology (Van Doren et al. 2017, PNAS), aero-ecology (Van Doren et al. 2015, The Auk), genomics (Sendell-Price et al. 2020, G3), and systematics (Van Doren et al. 2018, Wilson Journal of Ornithology).