German University Awards SUNY Oneonta Prof's Doctoral Thesis

By SARAH ROBERTSONEONTA

In February, SUNY Oneonta Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology Kaedan O’Brien was awarded the 2024 Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology Prize for his doctoral thesis on animal migration in prehistory. The award is given annually by the Institute of Prehistory and Medieval Archaeology at Universität Tübingen in Tübingen, Germany and is sponsored by EiszeitQuell, a mineral water brand. It comes with a cash prize of 7,500 euros, just over $8,000.00.

“It is such a huge honor, as only one person on the planet gets the prize each year, so I was shocked that I had received it,” said O’Brien. “I would love to not only continue pursuing this broader project—I have more papers coming out on the project soon—but also want to inspire others to do interdisciplinary research like this, combining anthropology, paleontology, and chemistry to answer fascinating questions that were previously unanswerable.”