FLBS Assistant Research Professor Rachel Malison Receives Prestigious Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Award in Field Biology 

The Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation has honored University of Montana Flathead Lake Biological Station (FLBS) assistant research professor Rachel Malison with the foundation’s prestigious Award in Field Biology. Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Awards in Field Biology provide support for scientists working at critical moments in their careers to explore, test, and help the world as we face both great challenges and opportunities.

Only five awards are made each year from nominations received from around the globe. Each awarded scientist receives $100,000 in unrestricted funds supporting their individual work, elevating their diverse perspectives and enabling them to commit time to observation and experimentation that helps us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

“Dr. Rachel Malison is a consummate field biologist whose insightful and extensive work in stream ecosystems, ranging from stonefly ecophysiology to the impacts of beavers and wildfire to water quality impacts of pesticides, is imaginative and impactful,” said FLBS Director Jim Elser. “Not only that, but Dr. Malison is a wonderful mentor of students and interns who provides an inspiring example for all of us here at the Bio Station.  We are so proud to see her receive this well-deserved recognition.”

Additional 2025 Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Awards in Field Biology recipients include:

• Natalia Llopis Monferrer is the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Scholar at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Institute and Station Biologique de Roscoff. Her research focuses on Rhizaria, single-cell organisms that can build siliceous skeletons and play a critical role in the ocean’s silicon cycle and carbon cycle.

• Fidisoa Rasambainarivo is an assistant professor at East Carolina University in Greenville. His combined expertise in veterinary science and biology is shedding light on the impact of introduced infectious diseases on Madagascar’s endemic mammals, including endangered lemurs and carnivores. These findings are advancing our understanding of pathogen spread in ways that will help guide effective conservation strategies.

• Anusha Shankar is an assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Her research is focused on how animals manage and balance their time and energy and how they respond to environmental differences across elevation, rural-urban gradients, and warming temperatures resulting from climate change.

• James Stroud is an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is working with lizards to better understand how species adapt and evolve, and how these ecological and evolutionary processes at the microscale may shape biodiversity at the macroscale.

Launched in 2020, the awards provide scientists with funding, attention and support at critical junctures in their careers so they can focus on mastery and creativity, elevate often underrepresented perspectives to problem-solving, and promote progress in the biological sciences through individual research focused on our natural world.

In the selection process, nominators from around the world confidentially identified scientists for consideration and a committee selected winners based on impact in the field, originality and the momentum an award could provide at a critical career point.

Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation powers people who explore and ask, teach and try, conserve and connect, create and captivate. Its funding supports individual scientists, teachers, conservationists and creators whose diverse perspectives enable us to discover new things about ourselves and our world. Learn more about this foundation and its work at www.Maxwell-Hanrahan.org