Congratulations to 2022 Fellow Christine Wilkinson on receiving the Cell Press, Cell Signaling Technology, and the Elsevier Foundation 3rd Annual Rising Black Scientists Award.

The Rising Black Scientists Award offers awards to undergraduate and graduate/postdoctoral Black scholars in the life, physical, and health sciences. The award offers monetary support to scientists early in their career and also offers them an opportunity to publish in high impact journals within Cell Press. The competition asks applicants to write an essay on what inspires their science, scientific journey, and the community they have built in their scientific life.

Christine’s research highlights the social-ecological intersections of human-wildlife dynamics. As a Fellow, she has pivoted to computer science and One Health, using data science and machine learning methods to understand shared social-ecological drivers of human health, wildlife health, and connectivity in urban spaces.

I received the Rising Black Scientists Award through being quite vulnerable in sharing my journey to interdisciplinary and ethics-centered science.

Christine shared her journey to and personal relationship with science in her award winning essay published in Cell: “The coyote in the mirror: Embracing intersectionality to improve human-wildlife interactions”. Christine’s essay explores how her intersectional background has inspired and is woven through her scientific research on commonly misunderstood animals, human-wildlife interactions, and shared human and wildlife wellbeing.

Christine commented on what the award means for her and her science: “I received the Rising Black Scientists Award through being quite vulnerable in sharing my journey to interdisciplinary and ethics-centered science. Being a recipient is extraordinarily validating, further confirming not only that I am on the right path with my recent Schmidt Science Fellows pivot to One Health and data science, but also that it is okay and even beneficial for my intersectional identity to play a role in this new phase of my science.”

The winners were selected alongside four additional honorable mentions from an outstanding pool of over 300 applicants from across the life, physical, earth, environmental, health, and data sciences. Read more about the award here.