From Plant Press, Vol. 11, No. 3 from July 2008.
The Department of Botany and the United States National Herbarium present this annual award to a botanist and scholar of international stature who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany is named in honor of Dr. José Cuatrecasas (1903-1996), a pioneering botanist and taxonomist who spent nearly a half-century working in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Botany. Cuatrecasas devoted his career to plant exploration in tropical South America, especially in Colombia, and this award serves to keep vibrant the accomplishments and memory of this outstanding scientist.
The winner of this prestigious award is selected by a committee made up of three botanists on the staff of the Department in consultation with other plant scientists outside of the Smithsonian Institution. Nominations for the Medal are accepted from all scientists in the Botany Department. The award consists of a bronze medal bearing an image of José Cuatrecasas on the front with the recipient’s name and date of presentation on the back. Highlights from past presentations to the recipients are available at http://botany.si.edu/cuatrecasas/cuatrecasasMedal.cfm.
Mireya D. Correa A., of the University of Panama and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), is the seventh recipient of the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany. Correa’s area of expertise is the systematics of vascular plants with special emphasis on the Flora of Panama. The award committee was impressed with her many accomplishments as educator, administrator and taxonomist. For close to four decades she has influenced students in her role as Professor of Botany at the University of Panama. She founded and has been director since its inception of the largest herbarium in Panama. She has contributed to the botanical community nationally, regionally and internationally through service to numerous botanical and environmental organizations including the Organization for the Flora Neotropica.
The committee also took note of Correa’s many contributions to scientific journals as well as several books published over the course of her career. Notable amongst these books are The Botany and Natural History of Panama (1985), Catálago de las Plantas Vasculares de Panamá (2004) and a monograph of Drosera (Droseraceae) for Flora Neotropica (2005). She is also involved in an ongoing collaboration with colleagues at the Center for Pharmacognostic Research on Panamanian Flora (CIFLORPAN) in the College of Pharmacy of the University, which has yielded many co-authored papers on plant natural products.
Correa received her B.A. from the University of Panama in 1963, and her M.A. from DukeUniversity in 1967. In 1968, she founded the Herbarium of the University of Panama (PMA). Starting with no specimens, the collection now has almost 70,000 specimens of which some 12,000 were collected by Mireya. The herbarium is Panama’s largest, holding approximately 1,500 types and 10,000 bryophytes and lichens, in addition to a small collection of macrofungi. Currently, the herbarium is playing an important role in coordinating the LAPI (Latin American Plant Initiative) project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation which seeks to image Latin American type specimens. Not content to curate one herbarium, Mireya also curates the smaller herbarium of STRI that has some 12,000 specimens.
Correa’s main research interest is to concentrate collection efforts in areas of Panama that have been ignored and might be rich in species diversity. She would like to survey these areas in order to have a better understanding of species distribution within Panama, including characterization of the species (i.e. endemic, endangered, rare, vulnerable). One important goal of hers is to document the plant species represented in several Panamanian national parks since such inventory is an important tool for the management plans of these parks.
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