We are pleased to present the first recipients of Ikala STEM Small Grants. For this year, Ikala STEM awarded two research grants and two travel grants.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank every applicant of this year and we encourage all of you to always follow Ikala STEM activities. Special thanks also to our 9 reviewers for their valuable effort and expertise in assessing the quality of the applications.
We wish all the best to our four winners in their studies!
Research Grant Recipients
Name: Antsa Lal’Aina Johanna Ratovonanahary
Grant: $650
Project: Understanding cave responses to its surrounding environmental changes: a test for prior calcite precipitation via cave monitoring.
Antsa Lal’Aina Johanna Ratovonanahary is currently a Master student in Geosciences at the University of Antananarivo, where she also completed a Bachelor's degree with a focus on “Sedimentary Basin, Evolution and Conservation” in 2017. She is currently involved in the project “PALEOMADA”, which aims to reconstruct paleoenvironmental changes in Madagascar. Her research aims to understand how caves in the region of Mahajanga, in Northwestern Madagascar, respond to modern seasonal changes. After the completion of this study, Antsa plans to defend her Masters thesis. She additionally wishes to share results of her research at international conferences, and hope to pursue a PhD in the same discipline.
Name: Prisca Razafy
Grant: $650
Project: Ecological niche partitioning of sympatric Malagasy small-carnivore species: selection of optimal habitat and response to the exotic carnivores invasion
Prisca Razafy is currently a PhD student in Zoology and Animal Biodiversity at the University of Antananarivo. Prisca’s PhD research project focuses on understanding the ecological niche partitioning of sympatric, native, small-carnivore species at forest sites within and around Mantadia National Park. This work intends to comprehend the mechanism of optimal habitat selection in these groups and their behavioral response to the invasion of non-native carnivores. The results of this study can be used in advancing ecological theory and informing management decisions for these declining, forest-dwelling carnivore communities. In the future, Prisca plans to extend her competence particularly in wildlife disease dynamics to become a full professional in Conservation Biology.
Travel Grant Recipients
Name: Rindra H. Nantenaina
Grant: $ 220
Project: Travel to attend the annual meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) on July 30 - August 3, 2019 at Ivato, Antananarivo.
Rindra H. Nantenaina is a PhD student in Plant Sciences at the University of Antananarivo. She received her Master Degree in Plant Biology and Ecology at the same university in 2016. Rindra is also the president co-founder and research officer of Ary Saina, a group of Malagasy conservation biologists. Currently, she is working on a project exploring the potential ecological benefits of galls for plants that rely on fruit-eating animals for seed dispersal. In the future, as a young woman conservation biologist, she plans to empower her vision for conserving the ecosystem of Madagascar and also to encourage other young women scientists to have the same perspective.
Name: Nasandratra Nancia Raoelinjanakolona
Grant: $ 220
Project: Travel to attend the annual meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) on July 30 - August 3, 2019 at Ivato, Antananarivo.
Nasandratra Nancia Raoelinjanakolona is a PhD student in Zoology and Animal Biodiversity at the University of Antananarivo. She received her Bachelor and Master degrees in Animal Biology from the same university. She has been awarded prizes at two international conferences for best student-poster presentations. She is a co-founder of the Association “Ary Saina”, which works in the fields of research and conservation of Madagascar’s biodiversity. She is also a member of British Ecological Society (BES) and is actively involved in the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) as an officer of the student chapter. Nancia is interested in the ecology and conservation of Madagascar’s biodiversity. She is currently working on a project exploring plant-frugivore mutualistic networks in the rainforest of Madagascar. Her goals in the near future are to investigate the role of each species interacting in the network and to quantify the strength of the networks in fragmented landscapes.
