Welcome to my personal website!

I'm currently making updates to this website so please check back in a couple of weeks!

I'm a second year PhD student at the University of Chicago in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy. Here's a bit about my research:

Bird beaks display remarkable morphological and functional diversity. Morphologically, beaks span a wide range of shapes and sizes and this morphology often relates closely to a diversity of beak functions. Functionally, beaks are associated with a wide range of behaviors, such as wood pecking, vocalizing, surface tension feeding, nest building, filter feeding, seed husking and preening. Since the position of one link in a linkage mechanism is dependent on the position of all the other links, biological linkage mechanisms are particularly informative for inferring the mechanical properties of musculoskeletal systems based solely on morphology. While there is considerable literature on the evolutionary morphology of bird beaks and the relationship between beak morphology and ecology, the beak (the upper and lower bill) constitutes only two of nine links in the avian jaw apparatus. Movement of the upper bill depends on the remaining seven links: kinetic bones behind the upper bill that form 4- and 5-bar linkage mechanisms, or a a closed loop of interjointed bones. The contrasting mechanical requirements of force, velocity, precision, deformability and manipulation for the diversity of beak behaviors suggest that the beak’s underlying linkage mechanism will also display remarkable morphological and mechanical diversity. I am currently employing 3D morphometrics, materials testing and computational linkage modeling to ask how beak function relates to the morphology of its underlying linkage morphology and how the morphology and mechanical properties of the avian jaw apparatus have evolved over avian evolutionary history.

Page last updated: May 12, 2011