The Cameron Award supports graduate and postdoctoral research on the ecology or behavior of rodents native to the New World, with an emphasis on (1) field research or (2) laboratory research that supports or augments field research. The 2020 postdoctoral recipient of the Cameron Award is Dr. Andreas Kautt.
Dr. Kautt has been a postdoctoral scientist in the Hoekstra lab at Harvard University since 2018. He has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the German Research Foundation (DFG). Dr. Kautt received his Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz, Germany, in affiliation with the International Max Planck Research School for Organismal Biology. His graduate research focused on speciation in crater lake cichlid fish in Nicaragua. His research has been published in journals including Molecular Ecology, PLoS Genetics, BMC Biology, BMC Evolutionary Biology, Nature Communications, Ecology & Evolution, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and Evolution Letters.
Dr. Kautt’s postdoctoral research is on the genetic basis of predator aversion behavior in deer mice in the Channel Islands archipelago. He is using an integrative approach by combining population genomics with field work – thanks to the financial support of the Cameron Award – and experiments with live animals in the laboratory.