STM publisher Springer, Germany, has announced a partnership with the Society of Mathematical Biology (SMB) to fund a series of prizes based on papers published in the Springer journal Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (BMB). The awards honour the enormous contribution that applied mathematician Lee Segel made to BMB and the field of mathematical biology as a whole.
This year's prize for the best original research paper was awarded to Tomas de-Camino-Beck and Mark Lewis for their paper - A new method for calculating net reproductive rate from graph reduction with applications to the control of invasive species. The prize for the best student research paper went to Emma Jin and Christian Reidys for their paper - Asymptotic enumeration of RNA structures with pseudoknots. The awards were presented at the annual conference of the SMB. The winner of the prize for the best review paper will be announced at the 2009 SMB conference.
The Lee Segel Prizes were established this year by the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology in association with the Society for Mathematical Biology. A $5,000 prize for the best original research paper and a $3,000 prize for the best student research paper are awarded every second year; a $4,000 prize for the best review paper is given every third year. A committee appointed by the SMB Board of Directors and the Editor-in-Chief of the BMB judges and gives out the prizes, taking on board advice of referees and referee reports. For this year's awards, all articles accepted from January 2006 were considered.
The BMB is the official journal of the Society for Mathematical Biology. The articles published in the journal offer a combination of theory and experiment, documenting theoretical advances with clear exposition of how they further biological understanding. The journal aims to be of major interest to theorists as well as to experimental biologists.
