Personal Statement :

I view classroom and laboratory education as central to the lives of the university, its students, and the individual scholar and scientist. At the most basic level, I am committed to helping to transmit to students basic information deemed necessary for their training as educated members of society, as scientists, and as physicians.

Since I joined the Brown faculty in 1990, my primary teaching responsibility has been as a team member for Biomed 181, Human Morphology, a double-credit, intensive study of human anatomy and embryology. The vast majority of students enrolled in this course are first semester medical students; in addition, a small number of Ph. D. and Master's students have enrolled in the course. This course combines lectures and extensive laboratory experience and provides medical students with their fundamental training in the organization of the human body; only a few members of each class will receive any further formal anatomical training before receiving their medical degrees.

I have had a great deal of interaction with undergraduate students although I have not taught undergraduate courses at Brown due to my large teaching commitment to the Medical School. I have served each year as a guest lecturer in a number of courses in both Biology and Engineering (4-6 lectures/year). I have sponsored a large number of undergraduate independent study projects and honors theses (average of five per year for the last two years), and have served as an active second reader for an additional series of theses. I have employed Brown undergraduates each summer since my arrival at the university, through both the UTRA program and through Research Experiences for Undergraduates supplements to my ongoing NSF-funded research.

Additionally, I play an active role in graduate education in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I have supervised two Ph.D. students, Dr. Jennifer Gray Chickering (Ph. D. awarded summer 1995), and Kathleen Earls (Ph. D. expected summer 1997).

The greatest portion of the time I have devoted to University service has been directly related to the education we provide at Brown. In particular, I have devoted a large amount of time to the selection, counseling, and education of students in the Program in Liberal Medical Education. Through my work on the PLME Advisory Selection Committee, I have reviewed approximately 100 applications per year from students applying to Brown's unique eight-year integrated liberal arts/medical training program. I have followed up my work on the selection committee by serving for the last five years as a freshman and sophomore advisor.

Research Interests:

My primary research interest is the function and evolution of the vertebrate skeletal system. I seek to better understand and interpret the tremendous diversity and range of adaptation in design of vertebrate, particularly mammalian, skeletons. Comparative biologists have observed for centuries that skeletal morphology shows patterns of diversity among taxa that correspond to patterns of functional capability. My research program applies rigorous analysis of these complex structure/function interrelationships to improve our understanding of the adaptation of form and function to the mechanical environment. At the same time, I seek to understand the historical and physical limits of adaptation. Placed in a phylogenetic context, these results will ultimately help elucidate the nature of evolutionary changes in structural design and the behaviors facilitated and constrained by particular morphologies.

My specific research objectives are:

1. to document directly the loads experienced by the mammalian skeleton during natural behaviors
2. to describe the morphology and mechanical properties of the skeleton in a functionally meaningful manner at a variety of organizational levels
3. to relate a detailed picture of mechanical usage to patterns of structural variation.
   

Meeting these objectives will produce a more complete picture of the functional biology of the skeleton, and will ultimately generate new views of skeletal evolution through the analysis of historical patterns of change in skeletal architecture or functional performance in relation to phylogenetic diversification.
At present, my efforts to achieve these broad goals are concentrated along two primary lines of inquiry:

1. how do the wings of bats function in relation to their morphological organization?
2. what is the significance of trabecular bone tissue? how does its architecture reflect its mechanical function?

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