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After growing up in southern California, I received two B.S. degrees in Geosciences and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona. From there, I went to the University of Chicago were I received my Ph. D. from the Committee on Evolutionary Biology. There I studied the evolutionary radiations of ruminant artiodactyls with Peter J. Wagner, then of the Field Museum of Natural History. During my work there, I became increasingly interested in phylogenetic methods, and how we as paleontologists could generate robust estimates of phylogeny in extinct taxa, and how we can use these inferences to understand other evolutionary processes. For my first post-doc at Duke University, I worked with Dan McShea, and applied these methods to study large scale trends in one aspect of biologic complexity. I then began a second post-doc at the University of Minnesota with David Fox, where we developed StrataPhy. After spending a year as a research assistant to Dena Smith at the University of Colorado, I have begun work as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Here, I am continuing my research into mammalian diversification, the evolution of complexity, and the methods we use to study these biological phenomena. |
