Hall of Fame Award: Chris Herd

On behalf of the adjudication committee of the UAlberta Museums Celebration awards, it is pleasure to advise you that Dr. Chris Herd has been selected to receive the 2020 UAlberta Museums Curator Hall of Fame award– congratulations! This nomination from Dr. Stephen Johnston clearly demonstrates Dr. Herd's “out of this world” contributions to the University of Alberta’s Meteorite Collection and dedication to the UAlberta Museums network. 

Dr. Herd has been chosen to receive this award because of his on-going accomplishments in the Meteorite Collection and his leadership in it’s elevation into a world-class museum collection at the University of Alberta. His led the effort to build the first-ever cold curation facility and have since pioneered cold curation methods for extraterrestrial samples and has additionally been instrumental in growing the Meteorite Collection to include the Tagish Lake specimens among others from over 300 locations. His accomplishments extend beyond the University of Alberta with his selection as a Returned Sample Scientist for the NASA Mars 2020 mission as well as his spot on the Project Science Group for Mars 2020. Within the UAlberta Museums network, he has also demonstrated tremendous leadership as a past and current member of the the Policy and Planning Committee where his contributions helped to form the 2008 UAlberta Museums and Collections Policy among other foundational documents. Additionally, Dr. Herd commitment and willingness to contribute to various UAlberta Museums projects (such as database barcoding, among others), illustrates that he is integral to the UAlberta Museums network.

Again, congratulations to Dr. Herd for this recognition on his tremendous contributions, and most important we would like to thank him. His dedication is indispensable to the long-term success of the University of Alberta Museums collections. 

read more: University of Alberta: Hall of Fame