Primatology Club Bicentennial Project - Where Are They Now?: Video Transcript

Linda Marchant, PhD [Professor and Chair, Anthropology]: Many of our students choose to pursue graduate study in primatology. They're enrolled or they've completed graduate degrees from many institutions such as Yale University and Johns Hopkins University. Here's a sampling of "Where Are They Now?" from our Primatology Club Bicentennial Project…and, yes, we have a Primatology Club for undergraduates where you can hear visiting speakers, your faculty, and your peers present their research and share experiences of studying primates.

Sarah Karpanty graduated Miami in 1998. She received her Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 2003 and she's now an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. Sarah began doing research in Madagascar during her undergraduate years at Miami. She's contributed much to our understanding of the predator-prey relations between birds of prey and the day-living lemurs of Madagascar.

Rob O'Malley graduated Miami in 1999. He's now a Ph.D. student in integrative and evolutionary biology at the University of Southern California. Rob's research focuses on the diet of wild chimpanzees, especially the insect component. He does his research at Gombe National Park in Tanzania.

Ben Auerbach graduated Miami in 2001. In 2007 he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Ben is now an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Tennessee. Ben does research on variation in human skeletal biology and he is especially interested in studying the processes and patterns of how people came to live in the Americas.

Melanie Beuerlein graduated from Miami in 2005. She is now a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Yale University. Here she is collecting data on the chimpanzees who live in the Ngogo community in Kibale National Forest of Uganda. Melanie has also studied gibbons in Thailand and, in 2006, worked with me and my colleague, Bill McGrew, in the Democratic Republic of Congo on a field study of bonobos.

If you have a passion for studying non-human primates or if you just want to know a good deal more about your nearest relatives, then why not consider studying primatology at Miami University…and remember, you're a primate, too!

[June 2009]