The Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation awards are often likened to a "genius grant" for field research. Each year, Maxwell/Hanrahan provides $150,000 in completely unrestricted funding to five, early-career field scientists.

New Mexico State University alumnus Marcelo Araya-Salas is among the five researchers selected to receive a 2026 Maxwell/Hanrahan award. He is a leading expert in the field of avian bioacoustics and hummingbird behavior. Araya-Salas is an assistant professor at the University of Costa Rica, whose research focuses on vocal learning, social behavior and acoustic communication in neotropical birds.

"This award can be very a big boost for my career," he said. "It means having more funding for conducting research and more time to focus on my research. As an assistant professor, I have been working on alternative projects and doing data analysis and teaching courses. But with this grant, I can focus more on research and have more time to work with the students in the field."

Araya-Salas engaged in biology field work while earning his Ph.D. in biology at NMSU, working closely with biology professor Timothy Wright.

"Although my lab has mostly worked on parrots through the years, Marcelo pretty quickly convinced me that if I let him work on hummingbirds, some interesting things could be discovered," Wright said. "We had known for a while that hummingbirds also were capable of vocal learning and very little was known about how they learned their vocalizations or what they were using them for. When Marcelo and I got down to La Selva Biological Station, a very famous tropical field station in Costa Rica, he very quickly convinced me that these were great birds to work with."

Araya-Salas' work has fundamentally reshaped scientists' understanding of how hummingbirds communicate and learn.

"Marcelo did a fantastic dissertation in which he was the first to describe adult vocal learning in a hummingbird," Wright said. "A number of high-impact papers came out of his dissertation. He then went on to a postdoc at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is a premier place for ornithologists. Then he returned home to Costa Rica, where he got a job on the faculty at the University of Costa Rica."

Key breakthroughs from Araya-Salas' fieldwork at sites like the La Selva Biological Station include: While most birds only learn songs in their early life, four years of research revealed 18% of the birds replaced their song-types as adults. This established hummingbirds as the third avian group (alongside parrots and songbirds) capable of lifelong vocal plasticity. Araya-Salas also discovered that hummingbirds socially learn their elaborate visual mating dances alongside their songs, a trait parallel to human communication.

Beyond field observations, Araya-Salas is heavily involved in developing data tools for the scientific community. He creates open-source packages in the R programming language (such as warbleR and Rraven)designed to automate and streamline the analysis of acoustic signals, making it easier for global researchers to study animal vocalizations.

"I started developing these tools when I was at NMSU when I was getting my Ph.D.," Araya-Salas said. "I think that set me apart from what others are doing in this field. I mean biologists don't often write code, but I like to code. I think it has helped my career, and I continue to do it today because I feel it's a contribution to other researchers. They are using these tools. So, on top of doing research, I'm also helping others to do the same."

The Maxwell/Hanrahan award provides innovative researchers like Araya-Salas "no strings attached" funds to give them time and financial freedom to innovate and conduct field research. No self-nominations are allowed, and the nomination process is confidential.

"The names of people who've won the Maxwell/Hanrahan award in the past is a really impressive list," Wright said. "What they're trying to do is identify people who have already made substantial contributions and who show extreme promise in continuing to make contributions to the field. It's a secretive initial nomination process. Marcelo didn't even know he was being considered. The foundation does a very good job of identifying innovators across the world. It's a global award, which I think makes it even more striking."

The full article can be seen at https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-alum-awarded-prestigious-honor-in-field-biology-for-innovative-research/s/09ff72b7-a1ad-47ba-b806-7f2723ec54c8