RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
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SCHOLARLY STUDIES AWARDS IN FISCAL YEAR 2020 SUPPORT 35 DIVERSE RESEARCH PROJECTS

In November 2019, the Office of the Provost announced the recipients of the fiscal year 2020 Scholarly 

Studies Awards. This internal grants program (approximately $1.7M) is available to Smithsonian staff in all 

disciplines, with a maximum $75,000 one-year award drawn from Trust and Endowment funding. 

A group of confidential Smithsonian peer scholars reviewed, rated, and ranked the 119 proposals received. A 

total of 35 awards were made to Smithsonian investigators or investigator teams. 

The internal program supports a variety of research endeavors. For example: How Will the Woody Productivity 

of Forests Worldwide Respond to Climate Change?, a project proposed by Kristina Anderson Teixeira and Sean 

McMahon who have joint appointments at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Conservation 

Biology Institute/Environmental Research Center; Analysis and Imaging of the Great Mongol Shahnama,

research proposed by Matthew Clark and Emily Jacobson of the Freer|Sackler; and a research, exhibition, and 

publication project, Africa Pops: Global Consumer Culture and African Art, proposed by Kevin Dumouchelle 

from the National Museum of African Art.
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FIRST JAGUAR IN PANAMA FITTED WITH GPS TRANSMITTER

Catch a jaguar if you can! After years of catching jaguars only in camera-trap images, Ricardo Moreno, 

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute research associate and National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and a 

team of 20 biologists and community members were able to catch a jaguar. The team fit the animal with a 

transmitter that will help researchers conserve these majestic cats in the wild.

Moreno, along with scientists from the Yaguará Panama Foundation, announced that a female jaguar 

called Chucunaque is the first jaguar in Panama to carry a GPS tracking collar.

“This is an historic moment for science in Panama,” Moreno said. “This is the first time that we have 

succeeded in placing a GPS collar on a jaguar to track its movements and understand how long it stays in an 

area. Not only will this help to generate more information about this species, but it will also improve 

strategies for its conservation.”

Chucunaque, named for Panama’s longest river, is from Darien Province, where, despite the designation of 

large areas as national parks and indigenous reserves, tropical forests continue to be cleared for timber and 

cattle pasture. The largest population of jaguars (Panthera onca) in the country lives in this area of the 

Mesoamerican Biological Corridor connecting high biodiversity regions of Central and South America. GPS 

monitoring of additional jaguars and environmental education in local communities is part of a strategy to 

conserve the region’s wildlife.
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CRITICAL ROLE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

The third annual meeting of the Global Consortium for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage was co-hosted by 

Yale University and the Smithsonian on October 21-22, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Michael Atwood Mason, Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (“CFCH”), served on the 

steering committee.

The preservation of cultural heritage is one of the grand challenges of the contemporary world. The goal of 

the consortium is to enable the global university, education, and research community to make a 

transformative contribution to the preservation of cultural heritage, through broad educational programs, 

major collaborative research initiatives, and effective engagement and advocacy.

This year’s meeting put a special emphasis on the discussion of relevant topics of interest to university and 

museum professionals. The theme–Museum Communities and Equity–invited participants to explore a range 

of issues including investigating the role of diverse communities in determining how their heritage is 

identified, protected, and managed; understanding the needs of the museum and cultural sectors in Africa; 

and developing creative engagement between cultural institutions and the communities whose heritage they 

maintain.

CFCH recently received $1.5 million from Ferring Pharmaceuticals for its Cultural Sustainability Program. 

Ferring’s latest contribution, and the center’s largest gift to date, will provide the resources necessary to build 

long-term infrastructure for the center’s Cultural Sustainability Program.

The Cultural Sustainability Program works with communities to design and implement strategies 

to sustain their languages and cultural heritage. The program seeks to understand and mitigate threats to 

cultural sustainability; scale the center’s impact through partnerships, convene on thought leadership; and 

transform public understanding about cultural diversity.
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SMITHSONIAN’S EMAMMAL JOINS WILDLIFE INSIGHTS CAMERA TRAPPING DATA AND ANALYSIS NETWORK

Camera traps are being used all around the world to understand better how wildlife populations are changing. 

Since 2012, the eMammal project at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute has offered an online 

archive and data management system for researchers and volunteers to study wildlife. Volunteers can set up 

camera traps (hidden, motion-sensing cameras) to take pictures of mammals and upload them to the cloudbased Smithsonian platform. There, these data are reviewed and studied by scientists and other volunteers to 

ask critical questions in conservation biology. The program has grown significantly since its inception; the data 

set now includes over nine million images of mammals from around the world, more than the number of 

physical specimens for mammals in North America.

Smithsonian’s eMammal has now partnered with Wildlife Insights. Wildlife Insights combines field and sensor 

expertise, cutting-edge technology, and advanced analytics to enable people everywhere to share wildlife data 

and better manage wildlife populations. Images added to the Wildlife Insights platform can be automatically 

identified using artificial intelligence. This will save thousands of hours, freeing up more time to analyze and 

apply insights to conservation.

A close up of a fox from the eMammal Tierschnappschuss Project. In this project, scientists are 

camera trapping the countryside and backyards around Konstanz, Germany.
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“A MUSEUM FOR THE PEOPLE” SYMPOSIUM

The Anacostia Community Museum and the Asian Pacific American Center assembled leaders and scholars 

from the field for a full-day symposium to discuss the past, present, and future of community museums and 

community cultural institutions on December 6, 2019. 

Fifty years after the historic 1969 gathering of community-based cultural institutions that resulted in the 

publication of the seminal book, A Museum for the People, the symposium was organized to convene 

colleagues across the Smithsonian and broader museum field for meaningful discussions around efforts at 

collaborating with communities to document, address, and represent their collective histories, cultures, and 

contemporary social issues.

“The symposium is an opportunity to discuss best practices, share strategies, and expand collaborations 

internally and nationally that will lead to new and sustained engagement with communities,” said Melanie 

Adams, Director of the Anacostia Community Museum. “I am particularly pleased to co-host this important 

event with the Asian Pacific American Center led by my colleague, Lisa Sasaki.”

Participants included Smithsonian leadership and other Smithsonian colleagues, museum professionals from 

across the country, and others with an interest in and commitment to community-based arts and cultural 

institutions. The event was supported by the Office of the Provost via a One Smithsonian Symposia award to 

promote collaborative research among Smithsonian units.