Calling all Northwest Marine Mammalogy Students! As a reminder, the annual spring meeting of the Northwest Student Chapter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (NWSSMM) will take place virtually on May 8th, 2021, hosted by the Marine Mammal Ecology Lab at Western Washington University (WWU). There is no cost to participate in this virtual conference. If you are interested in simply participating, you can register for the event up until May 7th. If you are interested in giving an oral or poster presentation, please register and submit your abstract by April 9th, 2021. Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfJCwlYwr4uBiKjkUsXVHJhz3tYqvNPF7ic0UHfBTnAQwZPlg/viewform<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fforms%2Fd%2Fe%2F1FAIpQLSfJCwlYwr4uBiKjkUsXVHJhz3tYqvNPF7ic0UHfBTnAQwZPlg%2Fviewform&data=04%7C01%7Cfreemag4%40wwu.edu%7Cd82330605ee54ca590c008d8f601e11d%7Cdc46140ce26f43efb0ae00f257f478ff%7C0%7C0%7C637529835230993770%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=otNH5iTnKI5DOiRnPWiwygUXdYW%2Bn5hNoS%2BY9fVqPYI%3D&reserved=0> Keynote Speaker: We are pleased to announce that the Keynote Speaker for the 2021 NWSSMM conference will be Dr. Valentina Melica! Dr. Melica was born and raised in northeast Italy. She obtained her BS and MS from the University of Trieste in marine environmental biology. During her master's, she spent two semesters in the United States as an exchange student, one of which was spent at Western Washington University, and completed her dissertation research in Slovenia, investigating reproductive biology of moon jellyfish. After a two-year break while she worked as an aquarist and volunteered at non-profit research organizations, her interest in marine mammal physiology led her to start a PhD in Fisheries at University of Alaska Fairbanks in Juneau, AK. She graduated last fall with a dissertation on reproductive and stress-related endocrinology in blue and gray whales. Valentina will share her career and academic experience and present some of the results from her research on how hormone concentrations in blubber can be used to estimate reproductive status (e.g., tell whether a whale is pregnant) and to provide benchmark data on the relationship between life history data and stress hormones profiles. If you have any questions or would like any clarification about the upcoming meeting, please do not hesitate to contact the planning committee via Grace Freeman at freemag4@wwu.edu<mailto:freemag4@wwu.edu>. We look forward to seeing you for this virtual meeting!