Many congratulations to our Dr Erica van de Waal, who has been awarded a prestigious international Branco Weiss Research Fellowship (see below) for the next five years, to continue her studies of social learning and cultural transmission in wild vervet monkeys in South Africa. She will switch to this from her present Swiss Science Foundation Fellowship with St Andrews at end of 2014, then formally becoming based in Carel van Schaik’s Zurich group, but continuing to collaborate with us in St Andrews.
Society in Science – The Branco Weiss Fellowship is a unique postdoc program. It awards young researchers around the world with a generous personal research grant, giving them the freedom to work on whatever topic they choose anywhere in the world, for up to five years.
This research fellowship is designed to support postdoctoral researchers after their PhD and before their first faculty appointment. Those in current postdoctoral positions are also eligible. Ideally, fellows pursue unconventional projects in new areas of science, engineering and social sciences.
The Society in Science fellowship program was initiated and financed by the Swiss entrepreneur Dr. Branco Weiss, who passed away in October 2010. The program belongs to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH).