PhD student Kumdet Panshak Solomon University of Jos, Nigeria has been named one of two winners of the sixteenth edition of the GBIF Graduate Researchers Award. Along with fellow award winner Esteban Marentes Herrera, a master's student from Colombia, this annual programme recognizes excellence in student innovation, research and discovery for work that relies on GBIF-mediated data.
"West Africa is home to unique bird species, yet knowledge of their distribution has long been limited," said Kumdet Panshak Solomon. "Through BirdPlus, which contributes directly to GBIF’s open data infrastructure, and by drawing on the vast records available in the GBIF database, we are building a stronger foundation for monitoring endemic birds and ensuring that local observations contribute to global biodiversity knowledge."
Panshak’s research advances biodiversity informatics and conservation in West Africa by leveraging GBIF-mediated data collected through BirdPlus, a mobile app developed with the Nigerian Bird Atlas Project (NiBAP). Designed to increase citizen science participation and data representation from the Global South, BirdPlus expands coverage of underrepresented bird species in Nigeria through a multilingual, user-friendly and offline-capable platform.
"Panshak played a central role in the development of BirdPlus and exemplifies the type of early-career researcher that the GBIF community needs," said Ulf Ottosson, NiBAP coordinator. “His research goes beyond tool development, using data from GBIF to revise distributional information for several endemic species and integrate them into authoritative platforms such as Birds of the World.”
Since 2022, the NiBAP team at APLORI, working with citizen scientists, ornithologists, and students, has published over 500,000 geo-referenced bird observations on GBIF. Much of the initial records came from earlier sources, but the adoption of BirdPlus has provided a practical tool that makes participation easier and steadily increases the flow of new records.Beyond being accessible through GBIF, these records are also available via the app’s dashboard, lowering barriers for users to engage in biodiversity data collection. This growing dataset has improved the temporal and spatial resolution of occurrence records for rare and endemic species such as the Indigobird (Vidua maryae) and the Anambra waxbill (Estrilda poliopareia).
“Panshak is diligent, innovative, and deeply committed to conservation,” said Adams A Chaskda, Director, A.P Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI). “His work is original, impactful and aligns with GBIF’s mission of advancing open biodiversity data and capacity building in underrepresented regions.”
The 2025 Graduate Researchers Award winners were selected by an independent jury convened by the GBIF Science Committee. Panshak's nomination was supported by the GBIF Nigerian delegation and node manager Omokafe A Ugbogu. He is the second student from Africa in a row to win the annual GBIF award, which comes with a €5,000 prize shared with Esteban Marentes Herrera of Colombia.
About the Award
The GBIF Graduate Researchers Award (formerly Young Researchers Award) is an annual scholarship programme that promotes and encourages innovation in biodiversity-related research using data shared through the GBIF network. Since its inception in 2010, the programme has recognized outstanding achievements in original biodiversity research by more than two dozen master’s and PhD students around the world. Explore the stories of previous award winners.
About University of Jos and APLORI
University of Jos was established in 1971 as a campus of the University of Ibadan. In 2024, the Senate of the University of Jos approved the conversion of the A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI) in the Department of Zoology into a Center of Excellence. APLORI is a leading center for ornithological studies and conservation in West Africa, providing training in ecology, biodiversity and environmental management
About NiBAP
The Nigerian Bird Atlas Project (NiBAP) is a national citizen science project aimed at documenting the distribution and population trends of birds across Nigeria. Using standardized field protocols and contributions from ornithologists and citizen scientists, it provides critical data for conservation planning and assessing environmental impacts on avian biodiversity.
2025 Graduate Researchers Award jury
| Name | Organization | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Enrique Martínez-Meyer | Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México | Mexico |
| Soledad Ceccarelli | CONICET, Universidad Nacional de la Plata | Argentina |
| A. Townsend Peterson | Biodiversity Institute, University of Kansas | USA |
| Lara Ferrero Gómez | Center for Research, Institutional Relations and Advanced Training (CIRIFA), University Jean-Piaget Praia | Cape Verde |