News

Today, Stephanie Marciniak, presented a fascinating lecture entitled "The Promises and Challenges of Primate Paleogenomics: Insights from the Nuclear Genome of a Large Extinct Lemur Megaladapis edwardsi." Dr. Marciniak, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State University, is using her...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Elizabeth Ballare passed her doctoral dissertation defense today. Liz’s dissertation “Health Effects of Rehabilitation and Reintroduction on Bornean Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii)” is based on her two-year fieldwork study in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia at the...

Three CHES Graduate Affiliates in the Anthropology Department did their "Second Year Colloquium" presentations today. This Colloquium allows graduate students in their second year in the PhD program an opportunity to present and discuss with faculty and other students their developing ideas for...

CHES Undergraduate Affiliate Alumnus, John, or as he's known among us here, JP Calcitrai (Rutgers Class of 2018) was just admitted to the PhD Program in Animal Behavior at the University of California, Davis. JP will commence his PhD career next Fall, working under the supervision of Jeff Schank in...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Alex Pritchard passed his doctoral dissertation defense today. Alex's dissertation "Variation of Stress Coping in a Socially Complex Primate" is based on his field research on olive baboons (Papio anubis) he conducted for 18 months at the Project Papio Research Site in...

Today, Curtis Marean gave the first lecture in the CHES Lecture Series for this semester. Dr. Marean's presentation was entitled, "A General Model for the Paleoecology of the Now Submerged Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, An Extinct Ecosystem Crucial to Modern Human Origins," based upon this many years of...

CHES Alumna Dr. Mareike Janiak (2018) is a coauthor of a newly published study using genomics to better understand the ecology and life history of primates. Compared to other mammals, nonhuman (as well as human) primates are characterized by especially pronounced longevity, brain size and dietary...

CHES Faculty Member Dr. Liping Zhao has developed an early treatment that will aid in preventing complications resulting from COVID19 infection. The formula has approval from the FDA for clinical trials commencing this month. To read more about Dr. Zhao's work, please check out: ...

CHES Almunus Dr. Stan Kivai (2018), who earlier this summer received an award from the International Primatological Society has just won another prestigious award! Dr. Kivai is the recipient of the American Society of Primatologists Conservationist Award of the Year 2020. as the ASP Conservation...

 CHES faculty member Dr. Lee Cronk and his collaborator, former CHES Associate Member Dr. Carolyn Townsend, have just published an important paper on generosity in humans. Drs. Cronk and Townsend have studied the Ik people of Uganda (the photo shows Cronk and Townsend in the field in Uganda)...

CHES alumnus, Dr. Stan Kivai (2018) has received the prestigious Charles Southwick Conservation Education Commitment Award from the International Primatological Society. Besides the distinction of honoring Stan and his work, the award also provides financial support for a conservation project of...

FOUR CHES Undergraduate Affiliates today presented their Senior Honors Thesis research in a special symposium at the Department of Anthropology: Rohan Alibutud: "Prioritization of Autism Candidate Genes from Whole-Genome Sequences of Affected Families." Rohan's research on an immense genetic...

CHES Faculty member Jinchuan Xing is one of this year's recipients of the Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research. Jin is doing exciting research in genetics and evolutionary questions, some of which he presented in a CHES Featured Research Evening. Congratulations, Jin!

CHES Graduate Affiliate Alex Pritchard was just awarded a prestigious Louis Bevier Fellowship from Rutgers to support him during the data analysis and writing of his dissertation. Alex did his dissertation research on "The Personality of Stress Coping" in wild baboon, which was supported in part by a...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Will Aguado was just awarded a Fullbright IIE Fellowship to support his research in Indonesia, "The influence of plant secondary metabolites on diet selection in wild Bornean orangutans." This award will support a year of Will's field research at the Tuanan Orangutan...

The Lembersky Conferences in Human EvolutionaryStudies have been an extremely productive and enlightening series of meetings address some particular aspect of evolution. The CHES faculty has now chosen the topic for the next Lembersky Conference to be held in 2021: "From the Genome to the General...

Dr. Jeffrey Rogers (Baylor College of Medicine, The Human Genome Sequencing Center) gave a lecture today entitled "What Ernst Mayr Didn't Know: Insights into Baboons and Other Primates from Whole Genome Sequencing". Dr. Rogers presented some of the new genetic data that he and his collaborators are using...

Dr. Nicole Torosin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Genetics here at Rutgers University, presented a lecture today, "Genetic Variation in Howler Monkey TLR7 and TLR8: Potential Implications for Susceptibility to Yellow Fever Virus." Dr. Torosin's research focused on determining the genetic...

Dr. Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science gave a lecture today, "Microarchaeology and the Underlying Science." In his research, Dr. Weiner synthesizes Archaeology, Chemistry, and the Natural Sciences into an approach offering particularly powerful insights into the human past.

CHES Alumna (2016) Emily Lynch, whose dissertation research was focused on baboons, has just been hired as Associate Curator of Research at the North Carolina Zoo. In her new position, Dr. Lynch will oversee all zoo-based research as part of the Education, Science, and Conservation Department. She...