HUMAN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY DOCTORAL PROGRAM

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This new phase of the Human Evolutionary Biology Doctoral Program (HEBDP) continues the tradition of promoting interdisciplinary research aimed at improving our understanding of human evolutionary history. In this application we include a new research portfolio that connects with an even wider range of sciences that includes molecular and organismal biology, earth and environmental sciences, chemistry, physics, materials science and engineering. It establishes a new and vital link with Howard University that builds on our complementary interests in comparative neuroscience, and introduces novel research themes and additional connections with other regional institutions. The objective of the HEBDP graduate program is to educate students in an atmosphere that promotes ethical and collaborative team-based research, via research themes that focus on a diverse range of key and tractable interdisciplinary research problems whose solution will improve our understanding of human evolutionary history. The program emphasizes hypothesis-testing and provides students with core transferable and specialist skills that will enable them to lead domestic and international research teams in investigations that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. It achieves this via a combination of traditional course work, innovative educational methods, significant opportunity for international research experience, and hands-on training in state-of-the-art research methods.

Broader impacts of the HEBDP: The evidence for our species’ recent evolutionary history is of unquestionable social and scientific importance. Yet, despite a wealth of fossil, archeological, molecular, paleoecological and comparative data, issues as basic as the evolution of the key modern human behaviors and the effects of environmental change on human evolution, and vice versa, remain poorly understood. This is because few students are trained in the range of analytical, experimental and conceptual skills now available for testing evolutionary hypotheses in an atmosphere that emphasizes and practices collaborative research. The HEBDP provides relevant hands-on research experience to train students to study the natural history of our species by applying innovative and integrative approaches to address evidence from comparative biology, genetics, fossils, and the archeological record. Our new research themes refocus the education of our graduates so that our students will emerge as leaders in new and developing areas of human evolutionary study. The HEBDP combines the best of traditional coursework with problem-based learning seminars, lab skills internships, ethics and management training, and training in the skills required for the effective public dissemination of science. Finally, the HEBDP incorporates new strategies to continue our success in recruiting from minorities presently under-represented in science.