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Dr. Sheela Athreya named the 2023 recipient of the Robert W. Sussman Award for Scientific Contributions to Anthropology by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

The Steering Group of Section H (Anthropology) of the AAAS has announced that Dr. Sheela Athreya (Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M) has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Robert W. Sussman Award for Scientific Contributions to Anthropology. “The Sussman Award was established at the 2017 Section H business meeting to recognize meritorious contributions […]

The Steering Group of Section H (Anthropology) of the AAAS has announced that Dr. Sheela Athreya (Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M) has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Robert W. Sussman Award for Scientific Contributions to Anthropology.
“The Sussman Award was established at the 2017 Section H business meeting to recognize meritorious contributions to the field of anthropology by mid-career anthropologists. It honors Bob Sussman’s embodiment of the science and spirit of Anthropology.
Dr. Athreya exemplifies the spirit of this award with her outstanding contributions to understanding the evolution of the genus Homo in the middle and late Pleistocene, especially with in Southern and Eastern Asia, and with her holistic approach to investigating variation within and across populations.
Please join us in congratulating Sheela Athreya for her remarkable research, and in toasting her at the Section H reception at the 2023 in-person AAAS meeting.
Bio: Sheela Athreya is a (newly minted as of Sept 1!) Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University, where she is a Chancellor’s EDGES Fellow and a Presidential Impact Fellow. She is a paleoanthropologist specializing in quantitative analyses and comparative anatomy of the craniofacial skeleton among Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins, with a view to understanding the evolutionary history of our species. She also critically examines dominant models of human evolution and the historical and social contexts in which they emerged, and advocates for theoretical frameworks that center the data, and voices of scholars, from marginalized regions. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University and her M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Sussman was her first mentor at Wash U and one of the reasons she went there, so this award is particularly special to her (and to all of us). Congratulations, Sheela!!!!”