A huge congratulations to one of our graduate students, Andree, for a very successful thesis defense and the passing of her qualifications! She has been working hard to prepare for this moment for a long time and greatly deserves this. So, YOU GO GIRL!! We are excited to see you continue to be successful in your academic and career endeavors in the future.

Hello everyone! The lab would like to wish to those who celebrate a Happy Easter and a Happy Passover! For those who do not, we still want to wish you a great day and week. We are proud and thankful for the diversity of our team at the Virtual Morphology Lab. As anthropologists, we strive to be open-minded and non-judgmental, and not assume anything about anyone. 

“Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over – except when they are different.”

– Nancy Banks Smith

 

Molly spent last weekend presenting at the National Science Teachers Association meeting in Atlanta with colleagues from the Florida Museum of Natural History. The lesson plan she developed would allow teachers to explore the diet of several hominin species through the measurement and analysis of their teeth using 3D printed mandibles. Great job Molly!

Any excuse for food is a good one here. Before our spring break, the members all brought food for a lab brunch during our weekly meeting and it was great! There were bagels and lox, scones, two types of quiche, cake with raspberry, muffins, and traditional Jewish hamentashen (from Naomi as she was celebrating the Jewish Purim Holiday that week). This shmorgisborg is a nice break from the usual work week and a fun, casual way to hang with your fellow lab members.

 This morning we decided to celebrate Naomi getting into her top choice for graduate school at Texas State! She brought fresh strawberries she picked over the weekend, Molly made a healthy paleo cake with the Texas State University colors, and Raphaela baked an apple cardamom pie.

Everything was delicious and congratulations Naomi on being accepted and offered a Graduate Research Assistantship!

FOOD! FOOD! FOOD!

 

 

 

Hello everyone! We are back from hopefully a relaxing, and a much needed, spring break! Some of us are so committed to our work here at the lab that they even stayed to get ahead on their projects. While some of us tried to take a break from research and projects for a few days. Molly went to Spain with her familia for the whole week and her stories and pictures are amazing! Naomi spent some quality time with her family in Jacksonville and then made a mother-daughter road trip out of her FAS Conference trip to Miami.

What kind of spring breaker are you?

Our undergraduate lab member, Naomi, presented for her first time at the Florida Academy of Sciences’ annual conference in Miami, Florida. Her poster was on her senior thesis research, titled Comparative Analysis of Growth and Development in the Hands of Primates. With the guidance of her advisor, Dr. DeLeon, Naomi was able to determine some similarities and differences in perinatal and juvenile primates between the suborders Haplorhini and Strepsirrhini. She hopes to do more poster presentations in the future, spreading the word and educating people about Bio-anthropology.

 Shown here in the photo is Naomi explaining her research to three of UF’s graduate students from CAPHIL who also attended the conference. 

Recently, our undergraduate volunteer, Naomi,  was accepted to Texas State’s Master’s program for Biological Anthropology! She has accepted the offer and will be working closely with Dr. Wescott on her Master’s thesis. She hopes to conduct research studying the effects of juvenile obesity on epiphyseal fusion rates in load-bearing joints. We wish her the best of luck in San Marcos, Texas as she has been an invaluable team member here at our lab. In August, she will become a Graduate student Bobcat, though she says UF will always be her home. Go Gators!

 

Congratulations Molly! Molly received a second grant from the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) to help fund her outreach initiative, the Human Evolution Teaching Materials Project. She plans to use the grant money to print an additional set of 3D hominin crania to loan out to schools that want to incorporate the study of evolution into their existing science curricula. Additionally, she plans to help fund the undergraduate student volunteers that have been helping develop HETMP. Great job!

Molly presented her human evolution education outreach initiative at the Southeastern Evolutionary Perspectives Society (SEEPS) meeting in Savannah, GA. She hopes to expand the Human Evolution Teaching Materials Project (HETMP) to more schools in the coming year.

Through HETMP, these schools will have access to human evolution modules, .stl files, and 3D pdfs that can help them incorporate the teaching of human evolution into their existing science curricula.