Congratulations to Mara Freilich, Thomas J. and Alice M. Tisch Assistant Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences and Applied Mathematics, on receiving a Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement (RCSA)! The award was granted to Mara Freilich and Cosima Porteus (University of Toronto) as a team for their cross-disciplinary project “Foraging in an Impaired Sensory Landscape: Using Sensory Biology to Inform Ecosystem Impacts of Hypoxia in Aquatic Environments”, which was developed at the Scialog: Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems (NCE) conference in March 2026.

The Scialog NCE initiative was launched to spur novel interdisciplinary research into the complex processes behind neurobiological adaptation to stressors such as exposure to pollution, toxins, and increasingly unpredictable environments. The conference, held March 12-15 in Tucson, Arizona, engaged 50 early career chemists, physicists, climate scientists, neurobiologists, and behavioral ecologists in a series of conversations to identify bottlenecks to progress in the field and to brainstorm potential areas of inquiry where new, cross-disciplinary research is needed.

Scialog, created in 2010 by RCSA, is short for “science + dialog.” Scialog initiatives include three annual conferences designed to stimulate intensive interdisciplinary conversation and community building around a globally important scientific theme. At the end of each year’s meeting, teams of two to three researchers who have not previously collaborated compete for seed funding for innovative projects based on ideas that emerge at the three-day conferences.

For more information about the Scialog NCE awards, please visit the RCSA website.