The 2024 Donald S. Farner Medal for Excellence in Research in the Field of Avian Endocrinology was awarded to University of Maryland Vice President for Research Gregory F. Ball. The award was presented to Dr. Ball at the International Symposium on Avian Endocrinology (ISAE) in Meerut, India.
The award recognized Dr. Ball’s research, for his foundational studies, impactful projects, and many contributions to the analysis of hormones, brain, and behavior in birds. As a post-doc, he conducted studies with John Wingfield that contributed to the establishment of the “challenge hypothesis,” a prominent theory in behavioral endocrinology. Later in his research career, he established how steroid hormones regulate defined functional outcomes in different areas of the brain in relation to the seasonal control of song behavior in songbirds. For example, he demonstrated how steroid hormones independently regulate motivational and performance aspects of birdsong production via action on different parts of a complex brain circuit. Dr. Ball conducted comparative studies of chemical neuroanatomy in birds that provided part of the foundation for the re-evaluation of theories of brain evolution, especially as it relates to avian species. He was also one of the first scientists to link motivational neural systems with the system controlling song production and song learning.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Ball has published over 350 papers, reviews, and commentaries, with much of the work focusing on the neural mechanisms associated with plasticity, learning, behavior, and reproduction in birds. These papers have now received over 27,000 citations according to Google scholar (H index 85). He was funded by NIH and/or NSF grants during most of his career.
He has also devoted much of his time to mentoring. He supervised the work of 29 pre-doctoral and post-doctoral trainees, including 16 women and three members of underrepresented minorities. Many of his trainees went on to tenured or tenure-track academic positions. Together, his trainees have published over 1,500 scientific papers that have attracted more than 66,000 citations.
In addition to his research and scholarly contributions, Dr. Ball has been an active university administrator. He served as Dean of Research and Graduate Education (2008-2010) and Vice Dean for Science and Research (2010-2014) at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. He became Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland in 2014, where he served for nearly 8 years. In January 2022, he was appointed Vice President for Research at the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
He is a fellow of the American Ornithological Society, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2014. In 2023, he received two major awards recognizing the overall excellence of his entire scientific career: the Lehrman Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology and the Coues award of the American Ornithological Society.