Alistair Seddon is awarded the Meltzer prize for young scientists for 2017.
He is Associate Professor in Quaternary Palaeoecology and a Research Council of Norway (RCN) Young Research Talent Fellow. He has an outstanding academic record in terms of degrees, prizes, research grants, research experience, and international publications.
He was awarded a Horizon2020 Marie-Curie Actions Fellowship for 2016–2018 which he declined so that he could remain in Bergen on his RCN Young Research Talent Fellowship (2016–2020) and Associate Professorship in the Department of Biology (2016–).
Alistair Seddon’s research, which broadly fall within the field of sensitivity of global terrestrial ecosystems to global changes, has been consistently innovative, highly productive and ground-breaking. He relishes the challenge of taking up new research lines. Besides fossil diatoms preserved in lake sediments, he has experience in stable-isotope analysis, molecular DNA techniques, organic geochemistry, statistical analysis, Bayesian inference, analysis of remote-sensing data, biodiversity assessment and analysis, and statistical modelling.
In the last five years, Alistair has published 14 papers or book chapters in international peer-reviewed journals or books. His publications include outstanding papers in leading journals such as Nature, Nature Climate Change, Ecology, Journal of Ecology, Ecological Applications, Global Environmental Change, PLoS ONE, and Journal of Applied Ecology. His paper in Nature from 2016 on the sensitivity of global terrestrial ecosystems to global changes attracted considerable international attention, including a BBC radio interview and an article in The Washington Post.
Alistair has been very successful at attracting research grants with 14 external grants since 2009. He won an RNC Young Research Talent Fellowship grant in 2015. He is an excellent teacher with a wide range of experience and expertise. His international standing is clearly identified by him being invited in 2015 to be a member of the Editorial Board of Biology Letters published by The Royal Society of London and by being principal investigator of a Past Global changes (PAGES) working group on ecosystem resilience in the past.
Although he is only 31 years old, Alistair Seddon has already established himself as an outstanding young international scientist. His wide range of talents is recognised by his many international and professional activities and is clearly demonstrated by his outstanding publication record.
