Popejoy Dissertation Prize: Dr. Jessie L. Williamson

Dr. Jessie L. Williamson is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology and Rose Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Museum of Vertebrates, and in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. She is also a Research Associate at the Museum of Southwestern Biology at UNM.

Dr. Williamson studies bird migration, high-altitude adaptation, and ecophysiology using diverse approaches—field experiments, migration tracking, genomics, transcriptomics, and museum specimens. Her work focuses on birds that make extreme seasonal shifts in elevation during migration, including giant hummingbirds; the roles of plasticity and adaptation in organismal performance across elevations; and how interacting abiotic forces generate spatial patterns of biodiversity.

Dr. Williamson works closely with collaborators in Peru and Chile to train students, teach workshops, and conduct museum outreach. She is also a freelance writer and photographer whose work has appeared in Outside Magazine and The Washington Post. Dr. Williamson has published 19 peer-reviewed papers, including 9 first-author papers, and is the recipient of the 2023 Ernst Mayr Award from the Society of Systematic Biologists and the 2024 James G. Cooper Early Professional Award from the American Ornithological Society. Her work has been funded by 18 different organizations, including generous support from the UNM Graduate and Professional Student Association, the UNM Latin American & Iberian Institute, and the UNM Department of Biology. In August 2025, Dr. Williamson will join the University of Wyoming as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology.