Two undergraduates and two graduate students from the Functional Morphology Lab presented their original research at annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, held in Cleveland, OH (2019). Abigail Nishimura (IDPAS student) presented her poster "Morphometric affinities of a new fossil ulna from Buluk, Kenya". SBU undergraduate Anna Zavodszky presented her senior honors thesis research on "The functional morphology of chevron bones in mammals", which she is currently revising for submission for publication. IDPAS student Sarah Mincer and undergraduate Penney Miyan worked together and presented their research on "A 3D analysis of sacroiliac joint surface topography among primates". Congrats to Anna and Penney on their first published scientific abstracts! đ Dr. Russo also presented research on "An ape partial postcranial skeleton from the Middle Miocene of Napudet, Turkana Basin, Kenya". All of their scholarly abstracts can be found published in the meetings supplement to the America Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Both Anna and Penney, as well as Lydia Myers, also presented the above research at the SBU Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities symposium in April. Anna and Penney received URECA research grants to conduct their research, URECA travel grants to present their work at the AAPA, in addition to SBU Department of Anthropology Undergraduate Research and Travel grants for these efforts. Impressive!!!
IDPAS students Abi and Sarah attended the SBU G-WISE (Graduate Women in Science and Engineering) conference in April. Sarah's talk on her dissertation research "Genetic and developmental mechanisms of tail loss in primates" was one of few selected for the G-WISE research showcase! Go Sarah! Sarah also attended an intensive two-day introduction to bioinformatics workshop at Cold Spring Harbor in May.
Finally, the lab said goodbye to FOUR of our undergraduate members đ - Anna Zavodszky, Jordan Guerra, Lucia Muzzarelli, and Penney Miyan. While we are sad to see everyone go, we are delighted to announce that Jordan will be continuing his studies as a graduate student in biological anthropology in the NYCEP program starting Fall 2020. We wish all our FML SBU graduates the best of luck đ
