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Maina Handmaker, a doctoral student in environmental conservation, has been named a Groundbreaking Graduate Student for January 2026.

The new award spotlights master’s and doctoral students whose outstanding research, scholarship and creative activity are making a real-world impact.  

Handmaker’s research focuses on whimbrel, a long-distance migratory shorebird species whose numbers have declined by nearly half over the past three decades. Together with a network of collaborators all around the Western Hemisphere, she is studying the migratory behavior of this species and making a concrete impact on efforts to protect them.

Handmaker’s success as a scientific researcher has been rewarded with a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship, and she has garnered over $20,000 in grants as a PI and served as co-PI on grants totaling more than $170,000. She has given nine formal presentations on her research over the course of her doctoral studies, and won the “Best Student Oral Presentation Award” at the centennial meeting of the Association of Field Ornithologists. Her work has been spotlighted in an op-ed in The New York Times, a feature on CBS Saturday Morning, and stories in numerous regional media outlets.

Perhaps most significantly, her research directly influenced the South Carolina State Legislature’s 2024 vote permanently closing Deveaux Bank to public recreational access during the nesting and migration season for seabirds and shorebirds, including whimbrels.

“Maina’s research is completely revising how ornithologists think about the structure of migratory bird annual cycles and the importance of roost sites,” remarks her doctoral advisor, Nathan Senner, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation and Mass Audubon Chair for Ornithology.

A complete profile of Handmaker and her research can be found on the UMass Research site, and more information on the Groundbreaking Graduate Student recognition can be found on the Student Research Awards website.