Dimitris KontopoulosI am deeply honored to announce that the Early Career Section of the Ecological Society of America has awarded me the co-second place for the 2025 Outstanding Paper #Award by an #EarlyCareer #ecologist. 🧵1/12
I received this #award for my 2024 #NatureCommunications #paper, in which my co-authors and I performed an extensive comparison of 83 thermal performance curve models across the largest compilation of such datasets to date (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53046-2). 🧵2/12
No universal mathematical model for thermal performance curves across traits and taxonomic groups - Nature Communications
Thermal performance models support metabolic modeling in diverse contexts. Here, the authors compare 83 existing models with 2739 thermal performance datasets, finding that model performance doesn’t necessarily depend on the trait type, sampling resolution, or taxon being studied.
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the #award committee and the external reviewers for this amazing honor, to my co-authors for their role in this achievement, and to my family for their support. 🧵3/12
Developing a catalog of effectively all existing thermal performance curve models and comparing their performance across diverse datasets was something that a) had never been done before, b) I could work on from my room on my laptop, and c) did not require any funding. 🧵5/12
The days were bleak back in 2020, when I started this project, and the future all but certain, but here we are now! 🧵6/12
Second, the Ecological Society of America counts among its ranks more than 9,000 ecologists, both from #academia and outside it. 🧵7/12
For someone whose first academic degree was in #MolecularBiology and #genetics, the co-second place for the 2025 Outstanding Paper #Award is a strong recognition of where my #research journey has brought me. 🧵8/12
This achievement would not have been possible without the contributions of all my academic mentors to whom I am most grateful, but especially to Prof. Samraat Pawar from #ImperialCollegeLondon. 🧵9/12
Samraat and I joined #Imperial within a few months of each other. He was then a Lecturer of #TheoreticalEcology, and I a Master’s (and, later, #PhD) student with a severely lacking background in #ecology. 🧵10/12
Despite this, he was endlessly patient with me, always with a smile on his face, and encouraged me to set high goals and surpass them. A great deal of my approach to #science can be traced back to Samraat, and I hope that one day I will be half the mentor he is. 🧵11/12
In closing, I am eternally grateful for this amazing honor and look forward to seeing what the future holds! 🧵12/12
Katja@DGKontopoulos 🙌🏾 🎉 inspiring