National Geographic Announces Emerging Explorers for 2009


National Geographic has announced this years recipients of their Emerging Explorers grants, which are awarded yearly to “adventurers, scientists, photographers and storytellers making a significant contribution to world knowledge through exploration while still early in their careers.” Each of the winners receives a $10,000 cash award.

This year’s winners are a diverse and eclectic group in a wide variety of fields. The ten winners are as follows:

Thomas Culhane (City Planner); Grace Gobbo (Ethnobotonist); Beverly Goodman (Geo-Archeologist); Kristofer Helgen (Museum Curator), Shafqat Hussain (Environmentalist); Malik Marjan (Wildlife Biologist); Katsufumi Sato (Behavioral Ecologist); Katey Walter (Aquatic Ecologist); Michael Wesch (Cultural Anthropologist) and Nathan Wolfe (epidemiologist).

Each of them are doing some really interesting work in their field. For example, Culhane is helping to train people living in the poorer sections of Cairo to install solar panels on their houses for alternative energy sources, while Gabbo is investigating the medicinal value of some of the plants used in traditional healing processes in Tanzania. You can read more about each of these emerging explorers in the press release available here. I’m sure we’ll also get more details on them in a future article as well. Congrats to all the winners!

Kraig Becker

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