The INA Foundation is designed to promote education and research on fossil or living nannoplankton through the accumulation, management, and distribution of charitable funds. Through our generous donors, we are able to award Student Travel Grants to partially defer the costs for students attending our INA Meetings and Workshops.
The INA Foundation also sponsors and awards the Katharina von Salis Graduate Research Fellowship and the Okada-McIntyre Graduate Research Fellowship to promote and facilitate research on, respectively, fossil nannoplankton and extant nannoplankton by the upcoming generation of early career researchers.
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| Blackites truncatus from the Eocene, mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain (SEM) | Cretarhabdus conicus from Albian, western North Atlantic (SEM). | Toweius pertusus from the Eocene, mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain (SEM) |
Donations to the INA Foundation help us to achieve our goals to help students
The INA Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 corporation. Contributions by US tax-payers are deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Donations may be sent to:
International Nannoplankton Association Foundation, (Attn: Jean Self Trail), 13222 Loyalty Road, Leesburg, VA 20176, U.S.A.
For electronic transfers, please contact Jean Self-Trail for details.
Graduate Research Fellowships
We support two research fellowships for graduate students, as detailed below. There is one call for applications each year, opening in March with a deadline of 1st July (possibly with some varations).
Katharina von Salis Graduate Research Fellowship - 2025 awards
The International Nannoplankton Association Foundation (INAF) is pleased to offer a Graduate Research Fellowships for $5000 USD honoring Prof. Dr. Katharina von Salis (also known as Katharina Perch-Nielsen) for her many contributions to fossil nannoplankton research and to the INA. The Katharina von Salis Fellowship is intended for students actively seeking advanced degrees researching any aspect of fossil nannoplankton research. There is one award round per year with the call for proposals made in March.
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Professor Katharina von Salis (Perch-Nielsen) is renowned for her outstanding contributions to nannofossil taxonomy, biostratigraphy and palaeobiology. Through her 35 year career in nannofossil research, she produced ca. 150 publications and named around 100 species. Her extensive scientific research includes numerous nannofossil studies on the K/T boundary, covering nannofossil mass extinction and recovery from worldwide localities. She was a major contributor to DSDP microfossil studies, taking part on Legs 12 and 29 and as co-chief of Leg 39. She was a major contributor to the NEPTUNE database collating myriad nannofossil occurrence data from DSDP and ODP legs into a single database. Katharina von Salis co-edited the indispensable Plankton Stratigraphy volume and wrote the chapters on Mesozoic and Cenozoic nannofossil taxonomy and biostratigraphy as well as the Silicoflagellate chapter. She was a strong supporter of equal opportunity for women in science and technology, in her home country of Switzerland and further afield and became the first woman geologist in Greenland, taking part in several expeditions there and leading three of them. As well as being a passionate geologist, Katharina von Salis was a keen sportswoman; her accolades include Swiss cross country skiing champion and vice world champion in orienteering. She was a founding member of the International Nannoplankton Association, the INA's first president (1977-1993) and organised the first INA conference, which was held in Vienna in 1985. |
Okada-McIntyre Graduate Research Fellowship
The International Nannoplankton Association (INA) Foundation is pleased to offer one Graduate Research Fellowships for $4000 USD honoring Prof. Dr. Hisatake Okada and Prof. Dr. Andrew McIntyre for their pioneering work in the field of extant/recent nannoplankton research and for their contributions to INA. The Okada-McIntyre Fellowship is intended for students actively seeking advanced degrees researching any aspect of modern/recent calcareous nannoplankton ecological dynamics, including seawater, sediment trap and seafloor sediment records, as well as from laboratory culture experiments dealing with any morphological, genetic, biogeochemical, and/or ecological aspects of coccolithophore species. There is one award round per year with the call for proposals made in March.
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Joseph Asanbe, 2025 Winner of the Katharina von Salis Graduate Research Fellowship I am a doctoral student at Uppsala University, Sweden, studying how marine phytoplankton communities, particularly calcareous nannoplankton, responded to major climatic extremes throughout the Cenozoic. My work focuses on resolving temporal and biogeographical patterns in community structure and identifying the biotic and abiotic drivers that shaped macroevolution in the oceans.As part of my PhD, I have spent the past three years investigating calcareous nannofossil evolution during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO; ~53-49 Ma), a period marked by extreme global warmth and elevated atmospheric CO2. My work examines how these prolonged greenhouse conditions influenced nannoplankton assemblage, diversity, and ecological turnover, as well as their role in regulating marine biogeochemical cycles. In the next phase of this project, I will integrate biometric analyses and inferred cellular trait estimates to assess the physiological and morphological adaptations that enabled key early Eocene nannoplankton lineages to persist under sustained environmental stress. By linking trait evolution, phenotypic plasticity, and ecological success, this research aims to illuminate how ancient phytoplankton responded to rapid climate change and to provide insight into the resilience and vulnerability of modern marine phytoplankton in a warming world. |
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Laury-Anne Dumoulin, 2025 Winner of the Okada-McIntyre Research Fellowship I am a PhD student in Oceanography at the Institut des Sciences de la Mer (ISMER) of the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR, Rimouski, Québec, Canada). My research focuses on the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of alkenone-producing haptophytes, particularly Isochrysidales lineages in polar and subpolar environments and their application in paleoclimate reconstructions.I seek to understand how environmental factors and evolutionary processes shape the diversity and distribution of these organisms and their molecular signatures at present and in the past. I am also interested in developing new methodological approaches to improve the reliability of paleotemperature proxies. This includes refining the use of alkenone-based paleothermometers in both marine and lacustrine systems, along with developing and optimizing methods to efficiently detect haptophyte sedimentary DNA signals in sediment samples. |
Current Board of Directors of the INA Foundation
The bylaws of the foundation are available here.
For more information about the INA Foundation, please contact Mike Styzen.