February 24, 2009 — Michael Pace, a professor in the University of Virginia Department of Environmental Sciences, received the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography at the society's meeting last month in Nice, France. 

An aquatic ecologist, Pace researches lake, river and estuarine ecosystems. Among several current research projects, he is focusing on the support of aquatic food webs by terrestrial organic matter and the role of atmospheric deposition and landscape structure in determining organic carbon and nutrient inputs to lakes.

A U.Va. alumnus who majored in biology and English, Pace has been on the faculty of the University of Hawaii and the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. He returned to U.Va. in 2007.

"By all conventional measures of citation, publication and leadership, Mike Pace has made outstanding and sustained contributions to science. Yet his colleagues praise him most for attributes that are not measurable by statistics," wrote colleague Stephen Carpenter from University of Wisconsin, Madison. "Although he is a brilliant conceptual thinker, Mike grounds his papers carefully in observed patterns of nature. He is a generous collaborator. … For his ability to raise the level of scientific conversation, and his many more tangible accomplishments, Mike Pace is an exemplary winner of the Hutchinson award."

The G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award has been presented annually since 1982 to recognize excellence in any aspect of limnology or oceanography. In lending his name to the award, Hutchinson asked that recipients be scientists who had made considerable contributions to knowledge and whose future work promises a continuing legacy of scientific excellence. Emphasis in selection is given to mid-career scientists for work accomplished during the preceding five to 10 years.