Artyom Kopp Selected as Guggenheim Fellow
Professor Artyom Kopp in the Field (courtesy)
April 8, 2009
Artyom Kopp, assistant professor of evolution and ecology in the College of Biological Sciences, has been selected to receive a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship Award. Dr. Kopp's areas of research include developmental and evolutionary genetics to understand the origin of new phenotypes and ecological adaptations.
Artyom Kopp will be in Austria at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna during his fellowship year. His project consists of sequencing and comparing the RNA of hybrids of different populations of Drosophila flies in order to address one of evolutionary biology's most hotly debated topics. This is the notion that mutations in certain regulatory sections of genes may play a predominant role in the natural variation that is found between individuals of the same species.
Kopp joined the UC Davis faculty in 2002 after earning a Ph.D. in developmental biology from Washington University in St. Louis and working as a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He and his lab group combine developmental and evolutionary genetics to understand the origin of changes in physical traits and ecological adaptations among organisms.
Media Contacts:
* Artyom Kopp, Evolution and Ecology, akopp@ucdavis.edu
* Liese Greensfelder, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-6101, lgreensfelder@ucdavis.edu
Excerpts from the Press Release
Guggenheim Fellowship Awards for the United States and Canada, 2009
Edward Hirsch, the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, announced today that in its eighty-fifth annual competition for the United States and Canada the Foundation has awarded 180 Fellowships to artists, scientists, and scholars. The successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants.
Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment. One of the hallmarks of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is the diversity of its Fellows. The ages of this year's Fellows range from twenty-nine to seventy; their residences span the world, from Waipahu, Hawaii, to New York City and from Toronto to Glasgow; and their Fellowship projects will carry them to every continent.
According to President Hirsch, since its establishment in 1925 the Foundation has granted more than $273 million in Fellowships to nearly 16,700 individuals. Scores of Nobel, Pulitzer, and other prizewinners grace the roll of Fellows, including Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Philip Roth, Paul Samuelson, Wendy Wasserstein, Derek Walcott, James Watson, and Eudora Welty.
In a time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the Guggenheim Fellowship program is all the more important. The continued and ever more generous donations from friends, Trustees, former Fellows, and other foundations have ensured that the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation will be able to continue the mission Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim set for it: to "add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding."
Read the entire press release on the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Web Site. A list of all 2009 Fellows is also on the Web site.