Ph.D. Student
My name is Kara and I am a second-year Ph.D. student in the FEMR Lab at Penn State. My research interests include skeletal ontogeny, bone functional adaptation, life history, developmental plasticity, and human evolution. The overarching goal of my research is to use a developmental approach to understand variation in internal bone microstructure. I am particularly interested in: what role does the skeleton play in life-history strategy? How does the skeletal growth rate affect the bone’s response to mechanical loading? In what ways do early environmental conditions affect skeletal development, and what implications might this have for life-history evolution and the modern human skeleton? I am currently working on my Master’s project, and am involved in the Life History project and the Human Variation Project within the lab.
You can view my works on my Google Scholar page.