Affiliated Postgraduate Students:

Name: Catherine G. Klein

Position: PhD student, University of Bath, 2015-

Hometown: Ettelbruck, Luxembourg

Undergraduate and Masters: University of Bristol, Palaeontology

and Evolution

Favourite Activities: Ballroom, blues, and swing dancing, travelling

to new countries and exploring their culture and cuisine

Catherine’s Research:

Catherine is interested in macroevolutionary patterns in vertebrates. She has

done descriptive work on rhynchocephalians (tuatara and kin) and snakes, but is now largely focused on using molecular clock methods to elucidate the effect of global events (mass extinctions, climate change) on the evolutionary history of squamates.

Name: Jake Berv

Position: Visiting NSF Graduate Fellow, Cornell University, 2018

Hometown: Stamford, Connecticut, USA

Undergraduate: Yale University, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Ph.D: Cornell University, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

(expected 2019)

Favourite Activities: Photography, cooking, spending time with

friends, arguing about the Marvel Extended Universe

Jake's Research:

Jake is interested in the interface between micro and

macroevolution, and how microevolutionary processes generate

macroevolutionary patterns. To investigate these questions, he uses a number of data types and study systems, including the songbirds of the Amazon basin, the fossil record of modern birds and their closest relatives, and genomic data across modern birds.

Other postgrads: Daniel currently co-supervises the PhDs of Brigit Tronrud (Oxford), Rebecca Lakin (Bath), Conrad Van den Ende (Bath), Yimeng Li (Bath), and Fiann Smithwick (Bristol), and is a thesis advisor for Ben Igielman, Alexandra Howard, Lucy Roberts, and Abigail Parker (Cambridge Zoology). 

Name: Juan Benito Moreno

Position: PhD Student, 2017-

Hometown: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Undergraduate: Universitat de Barcelona, Biology

Masters: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Palaeontology

Favourite Activities: Listening to music and going to as many gigs

as possible, drinking craft beer, collecting lots of stuff that I don’t

need and can’t afford like Victorian nature prints and animal skulls.

Juan’s Research:

Juan is interested in animal evolution, phylogeny and morphological disparity, and how different groups are related to each other. He uses both traditional methods, such as morphological description and comparative anatomy, as well as novel computational techniques.  His previous research focused on frequently overlooked small vertebrates, including lepidosaurs and procolophonids, but he is studying early birds for his PhD.

Name: Albert Chen

Position: PhD Student, 2017-

Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Undergraduate: University of Maryland, College Park, Geology

Masters: University of Bristol, Palaeobiology

Favourite Activities: Reading, cartooning, birding, and science

communication

Albert’s Research:

Albert’s primary interests lie in the function, ecology, and evolution of vertebrate animals (especially maniraptoran dinosaurs). He pursues palaeontology due to its ability to shed light on the origins of modern organisms and environments. He studies the anatomy, biomechanics, and systematics of a variety of fossil birds and their close relatives.

Name: Daniel J. Field (djf70[at]cam.ac.uk)

Position: Lab PI, University Lecturer

Hometown: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Undergraduate: University of British Columbia, Zoology

MPhil & PhD: Yale University, Geology & Geophysics

Predoctoral Fellowship: Smithsonian NMNH, Division of Birds

CV; Google Scholar; ResearchGate

Daniel is an evolutionary palaeobiologist at the University of Cambridge, and a research associate in palaeontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He is also a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, where Charles Darwin spent his undergraduate years. Daniel is fascinated by Earth’s modern biodiversity, and his research uses the vertebrate fossil record to help answer questions about how, where, and when this diversity arose. He is passionate about natural history, evolution, and science outreach, and enjoys studying and photographing Earth’s vertebrate biodiversity in the field.

Name: Jake Callaghan

Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017

Hometown: Reading, UK

Undergraduate: University of Bath

Favourite Activities: Listening to music (loudly), watching documentaries, wandering around outside of civilisation

Jake’s Research:

Jake dove into the world of Bayesian phylogenetics to investigate the higher-order interrelationships of living birds and their survival patterns across the K-Pg boundary.

Name: Georgina Halford

Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017

Hometown: Flitwick, Bedfordshire, UK

Undergraduate: University of Bath

Favourite Activities: Playing water polo, long-distance swimming, and watching wildlife documentaries

Georgina’s Research:

Georgina examinined the evolution of the avian hindlimb by working with high-resolution three-dimensional scans of Mesozoic avialan legs.

Name: Jono Gooch

Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017

Hometown: Ledbury, Herefordshire, UK

Undergraduate: University of Bath

Favourite Activities: Playing cricket and football, watching most other sports, and travelling to new places

Jono’s Research:

Jono studied the anatomy of early amniotes to gain a clearer understanding of how vertebrates originally became specialized for life on dry land.

Name: Joe Hardy

Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017

Hometown: Haslemere, Surrey, UK

Undergraduate: University of Bath

Favourite Activities: Watching football and rugby, walking his awesome dogs

Joe’s Research:

Joe’s work was focused on the anatomy of the wings of Mesozoic Avialae.

Name: Dania Kewbank

Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2018

Hometown: London, UK

Undergraduate: University of Bath

Favourite Activities: Walking her new puppy, terrible reality TV, kickboxing and travelling

Dania’s Research:

Dania studied the pelvic morphology of bird-like dinosaurs using high-resolution visualization techniques.

Undergraduate Students:

Postdoctoral Researchers

Name: Dr. Junya Watanabe

Position: Newton International Fellow, 2019-2021

Hometown: Echizen, Fukui, Japan

Undergraduate, Masters and PhD: Kyoto University, Science

Favourite Activities: Cycling, travelling

Junya’s Research:

Junya’s primary research interests regard the influence of developmental factors on the evolution and diversification of life forms. He aims to provide a framework for testing whether biases in microevolutionary variability have influenced macroevolutionary diversification patterns. As a case study, he plans to study a variety of marine birds and apply a combination of anatomical, morphometric, and comparative methods.

Postgraduate Students

Name: Elizabeth Steell

Position: NERC C-CLEAR DTP PhD student, beginning Oct. 2019