Congratulations to Dr Erin Saupe – a 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize winner

We are pleased to announce that Dr Erin Saupe has been awarded a 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize in recognition of her outstanding research.

The Leverhulme Trust awards £3 million to 30 outstanding researchers across the UK annually, each prize is worth £100,000 which can be used over two or three years to advance their research. In 2021 the Leverhulme Trust offered five prizes in each of the following subject areas: Classics, Earth Sciences, Physics, Politics and International Relations, Psychology, Visual and Performing Arts. Further information about all 2021 Prize winners is available from the Leverhulme Trust.

Erin’s research applies deep-time information to current problems of species’ conservation, focusing on understanding how environmental changes govern evolutionary and ecological processes. Anthropogenic climate change is threatening Earth’s biodiversity, and risks are expected to accelerate in coming decades. It has therefore never been more important to understand the relationship between climate and biodiversity, provided by palaeobiological data. Erin’s research will continue to leverage the fossil record to understand how species respond to environmental changes over both long and short timescales.

Erin said of the prize ‘Leverhulme Prize funding will allow me to advance my research programme in conservation palaeobiology. I will be examining how phytoplankton respond to future climate change, which has large-scale ecosystem implications.’