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.
Katharina von Salis Graduate Research Fellowship - 2023 awards
The International Nannoplankton Association Foundation (INAF) is pleased to offer two Graduate Research Fellowships (one for $2500 USD and one for $1000 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.
Applications for the 2023 grants (value $2500 and $1000) are open now, please download the application form here: MS-Word file or PDF version. The deadline for application completion is 1st July 2023.
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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 two Graduate Research Fellowships (one for $2500 USD and one for $1000 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.
Applications for the 2023 grants (value $2500 and $1000) are open now, please download the application form here: MS-Word file or PDF version. The deadline for application completion is 1st July 2023.
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Professor Hisatake Okada, was a pioneer in extant and recent nannoplankton research. He was a student of Susumo Honjo at the University of Hokkaido in the late 1960's where he began working with living calcareous nannoplankton collected whilst on Japanese research vessels. In the early 1970;s, he followed Honjo to the USA to work as an assistant scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and together with Honjo published papers on Florisphaera, community structure and marginal seas. Later, working at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University as a research associate, he closely collaborated with Andrew McIntyre and published classic papers on taxonomy and seasonality. In the late 1970’s he returned to Japan and spent 20 years at Yamagata University, publishing on coccolithophorids and Gephyrocapsa evolution and participating on several DSDP & ODP legs (43, 58, 115, 164) as a nannofossil biostratigrapher, one of which resulted in the Okada & Bukry (1981) zonation still widely used today. In 1995, he moved to Sapporo, initially as a professor, and later became Dean of the Faculty of Science and Vice-President of Hokkaido University. Hisatake Okada was awarded prizes by the Paleontological Society of Japan (1988) and the Geological Society of Japan (1993). He was a keen climber and member of the university mountaineering club, and after he retired enjoyed photographing alpine flowers and compiling online guidebooks on them. |
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Professor Andrew McIntyre, was a palaeoclimatologist and a pioneer in the study of coccoliths and of their application to Quaternary oceanography and climate. He was a double alumnus of the University of Columbia, USA, where he held positions as Assistant in Sedimentation and Invertebrate Paleoecology, Biostratigraphy and Geomorphology, and as a Research Scientist. During his graduate student years, he was a skilled pilot and the proud owner of a single engine aircraft. From 1967 until his retirement in 1996, he worked at the faculty of Queens College of the City University of New York. Along with collaboration with Hisatake Okada, Andrew McIntyre was one of the pioneers of the use of the electron microscope to observe coccoliths. He was a major contributor to the CLIMAP (Climate: Long range Investigation, Mapping, and Prediction) research project, leading the collation of data and resulting production of the first global, 18,000 year summer and winter sea-surface temperature reconstruction, which is still widely referenced over 4 decades later. Examples of his many important publications include papers on Pacific and Atlantic Ocean modern Coccolithophores, their taxonomy and seasonal distribution with Hisatake Okada, and the establishment of Florisphaera profunda as a palaeoproductivity marker in series of papers with Barbara Molfino. |
Progress reports from the 2022 Award winners
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Sara Marconato, 2022 Winner of a Katharina von Salis Graduate Research Fellowship The Shefela project, whose preliminary results I presented in a poster during INA18 in Avignon, is about to finish and only some final geochemical measurements remain to be performed, in order to detect with more resolution negative shifts related to climatic events. The main preliminary conclusions from this project are that calcareous nannofossil assemblages are abundant and with a medium species richness in the very eutrophic condition of the upwelling zone. The assemblages reacted to the main climatic events of the Campanian-Maastrichtian, although the paleoecological conditions were not oligotrophic. This is very important because it confirms the broad ecological tolerance of coccolithophorids and we hope, by the end of my PhD, to be able to fully explain the conditions of life of calcareous nannofossils assemblages in eutrophic environment during Late Cretaceous. Expenses were used on the SEM to identify a very abundant particular species found in optical microscope and there is the willingness to spend $550 for Mesozoic INASSET Summer School in Parma. There is also the willingness to organize a trip to Copenhagen next year and I started to talk with my Lab Manager for a new hood. |
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Felipe Vallejo, 2022 Winner of a Katharina von Salis Graduate Research Fellowship The funds granted to me were used as a scholarship to cover my living expenses during my visit with my supervisor, Dr. Jos&ecute Abel Flores, and for the preparation and analysis of samples for calcareous nannofossils. Although I am currently a PhD student at the University of Salamanca, my research requires me to spend a significant amount of time in Colombia. As a result, I needed to have in-person sessions with my supervisor to discuss specific taxonomic questions related to the determination of calcareous nannofossils. During my visit, Dr. Flores and I were able to address these questions, and I am currently in the process of preparing and analyzing additional samples. Our goal is to increase the biostratigraphic resolution of the, already sampled, stratigraphic section from the northern part of my study area. The results from these analyses will enable us to complete the age model for a manuscript that is required for my PhD graduation. |
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.