Rohlf Medal for Excellence 2025

sub­mit­ted by Eric Delson

The Rohlf Medal for Excel­lence in Morpho­met­ric Meth­ods and Applications

2025 CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

The Rohlf Medal was estab­lished in 2006 by the fam­ily and friends of F. James Rohlf to mark his 70th birth­day. He has been a long­time Stony Brook Uni­ver­sity fac­ulty mem­ber and is cur­rently Emer­it­us Dis­tin­guished Pro­fess­or in the Depart­ment of Eco­logy and Evol­u­tion, and Research Pro­fess­or in the Depart­ment of Anthropology.

Recip­i­ents of the Rohlf Medal will be recog­nized for excel­lence in their sus­tained body of work on the devel­op­ment of new morpho­met­ric meth­ods and their applic­a­tions in the bio­med­ic­al sci­ences, includ­ing evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy, pop­u­la­tion bio­logy, bio­lo­gic­al anthro­po­logy, devel­op­ment­al bio­logy, molecu­lar struc­ture, molecu­lar geo­metry and medi­cine. The term “morpho­met­rics” is inten­ded to include high-dimen­sion­al pat­tern ana­lyses of bio­lo­gic­al shape, espe­cially those that ana­lyze shape in a com­pre­hens­ive way, or of cov­ari­ation of shape with oth­er vari­ables. The award can recog­nize a body of work that has sig­ni­fic­antly advanced the field, includ­ing: math­em­at­ic­al or stat­ist­ic­al the­ory under­ly­ing morpho­met­ric meth­ods, soft­ware that imple­ments or visu­al­izes new meth­ods, or a body of bio­lo­gic­al find­ings that rely cru­cially on con­tem­por­ary morpho­met­ric meth­ods and rep­res­ent major advances in approach. More inform­a­tion about the Medal and past awardees can be found at

https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/anthropology/aboutus/rohlf-medal/about_medal

Can­did­ates for the Rohlf Medal may be self-nom­in­ated or nom­in­ated by oth­ers. They must pos­sess a Ph.D. degree or the equi­val­ent. Nom­in­a­tions (at this stage only name, email and a 25–50 word rationale) should be sub­mit­ted by 20 June, 2025 at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScx-P1sxtfdbO2QwM_QhSCa-9xMXAxqQz04zYsKBHUBhxzXDA/viewform

Nom­in­a­tion pack­ages will be reques­ted by the Com­mit­tee and should include:

1. a descrip­tion of the body of work (past accom­plish­ments and future plans; not to exceed two pages [600 words, in doc/docx or pdf format]) on which the can­did­acy is based,
2. pdf ver­sions of up to 3 rel­ev­ant papers and/or soft­ware products,
3. a cur­riculum vitae, and
4. the names and emails of two poten­tial ref­er­ences (let­ters are not needed yet).

Full nom­in­a­tion pack­ages should be sub­mit­ted to the Rohlf Medal Com­mit­tee by 5 pm, EDT, 1 July of 2025 to be assured of full con­sid­er­a­tion. Note that upon request nom­in­a­tions from pri­or years can be retained (although updates of some of the inform­a­tion will likely be needed).

The win­ning can­did­ate must agree to attend the award cere­mony in per­son, where she/he will receive the Rohlf Medal and a cash prize at Stony Brook Uni­ver­sity, on Octo­ber 22nd, 2025. She or he will deliv­er a lec­ture that is appro­pri­ate for a broad audi­ence, ran­ging from the exact sci­ences to the human­it­ies, con­cern­ing the morpho­met­ric meth­od­o­logy, soft­ware, or find­ings for which the Rohlf Medal was awarded.

If you have ques­tions about this nom­in­a­tion or need oth­er inform­a­tion, please con­tact Com­mit­tee Chair Dr. Eric Del­son.