Dr. Rachel A. Racicot

RAchel RAcicot (PI)

As of September 2023 I am Head of Section in Sensory System Evolution in the Messel Research Department at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum.

My research career started as an undergraduate at UT Austin when I had the opportunity to work for UTCT and DigiMorph.org through the supervision of Dr. Tim Rowe. I continued working at UTCT for ~1.5 years after graduating from UT with a BS in Biology: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation. I began an MS in Evolutionary Biology in 2004 at San Diego State University with marine mammal paleontologist Dr. Annalisa Berta. After earning my MS, I went back to work at UTCT for approximately one year before beginning my PhD at Yale University with Dr. Jacques Gauthier, thinking I would study birds. I had the great opportunity to do research in Japan for the summer of 2013 with Dr. Naoki Kohno at the National Museum of Nature and Science with funding from the NSF–EAPSI (East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute) program. I began postdoctoral work on morphology and phylogeny of scleractinian corals and neuroanatomy of Cryolophosaurus with Dr. Nate Smith, first at Howard University and then at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. I continued this and my marine mammal research program for one year at Vanderbilt University. For the 2018–2019 academic year I was a sabbatical replacement Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology at the Keck Science Department serving Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges in Claremont, California. Following this I was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). After that initial tenure at Senckenberg, I was a Research Assistant Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University. I went back to Germany continuing my AvH-funded research in the summer of 2022.

You?

Research opportunities available here. If you have other ideas and want to chat about options, do feel free to contact me!

Will Gearty

Dr. Gearty was an undergraduate at Yale University when he worked with me on true porpoise (phocoenid) inner ear labyrinths. He earned his PhD at Stanford University, having published some great work on energetic tradeoffs in body size of aquatic mammals. He was postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska and continues postdoctoral work at the American Museum of Natural History.