Professor Erin Saupe presented with Paleontological Society’s Schuchert Award

9 August 2024
Head and shoulder photograph of Erin Saupe. She has long blonde hair and is wearing a black top. She is wearing red lipstick and smiling at the camera.

Professor Erin Saupe is the recipient of the 2024 Schuchert Award, presented by the Paleontological Society annually to a member early in their career whose work reflects excellence and quality. The Paleontological Society is an international organisation founded in 1908 and is devoted to the advancement of palaeontology. Members of the Society comprise a community spanning 40 countries across the globe.

Professor Saupe works at the heart of palaeobiology research here in the Department of Earth Sciences. Her research centres around investigations of the interactions between life and environments over geological timescales, addressing fundamental questions on the origin, maintenance and conservation of biological diversity. Erin leads the Saupe Lab, an exciting community of researchers who utilise a broad tool-kit of investigative methods to delve into the field’s most exciting questions.

“I am incredibly grateful to the Paleontological Society for this honour. I am humbled, as it feels like only yesterday that I remember watching this very awards ceremony as a bright-eyed undergraduate student”
- Professor Erin Saupe
Photograph of Erin Saupe talking to members of the public at a display in a museum

A large part of Erin’s research aims to integrate biological data with information from the fossil record to elucidate the controls on community and species’ responses to environmental change. Highlights of her work to-date include examination of why diversity is higher in the tropics, how diversity has varied over Earth history, and whether species’ abiotic tolerances change over long timescales. Most recently, research from the Saupe Lab was featured in the journal Science, which analysed the fossil record for marine invertebrates and identified key traits that may affect species’ resilience to extinction. Professor Saupe’s research excellence has also been recognised by award of the Hodson from the Palaeontological Association, the Philip Leverhulme Prize, and a Blavatnik Award.

Prior to joining Oxford in 2016, Professor Saupe was a Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. She received her PhD from the University of Kansas in 2014. Erin was promoted to Professor in 2023 by the University’s Recognition of Distinction panel. The panel awards professorships on the basis of exceptional leadership track record in research, service to the community and teaching. She is also a tutorial fellow at St Hugh’s College.

Professor Saupe contributes significantly to the Department’s Equality, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives, serving as Chair of the EEDI Committee. For example, she helped draft the Department’s anti-racism statement and was involved in crafting a report that was made publicly available in an online discussion event that she Chaired to increase minority ethnic representation in the Department and field more broadly. Outside of Oxford, she has served as co-Chair of the Goldring Awards Committee for the last decade, where she and her colleagues have worked to expand funding to support female students.

Photograph of Erin Saupe standing on a balcony in a museum with exhibits behind her
“I am thrilled that Erin has been selected for the Charles Schuchert Award. This prestigious award is a richly deserved recognition of the quality of Erin’s research and a testament to her rising status as a leader in the field of palaeontology”
- Professor Mike Kendall, Head of Department

Reflecting on her award, Professor Saupe said “I am so grateful to my nominators, colleagues, friends, and family for their support over the years. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their guidance, wisdom, and love, but I am also cognizant of the many privileges that I, by chance, have been afforded that allowed for this recognition”.