PEOPLE
Kristine Chua, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Kristine Chua is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Anthropology at UCSB. She earned her Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from UCLA. Her research interests center around evolutionary and biocultural anthropology perspectives to examine how perceptions of mortality risk affect developmental trajectories and human reproductive health. She works closely with pregnant Filipina women in Ilocos Norte, Philippines and Filipina American women in Southern California.
Cristiano Parmeggiani
Graduate Student
Cristiano is pursuing a PhD in biological anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has a background in both the humanities and the evolutionary sciences. His current interests lie in the fields of evolutionary medicine, and he is currently working at the forefront of microchimeric research, and on the evolutionary mechanisms behind cancer.
Janine Rose Klein
Graduate Student
Janine Rose Klein is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at UCSB, with B.S. degrees from UC Davis in Evolutionary Anthropology and Wildlife Conservation Biology. They use evolutionary theory to understand disease risk using a comparative approach. Their current research project examines cancer prevalence across the primate order and its relationship to species life history strategies.
Amy Boddy, PhD
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Wayne State University – School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan.
ALUMNI
Tiffany Pan, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Tiffany Pan is a Research Scientist and Biodemography Lab Director at CSDE. She collaborates with and provides support for researchers incorporating biomarker methods in population health research. Some areas of biodemographic services include consulting on study design, assistance with specimen collection and storage, conducting laboratory analyses, and training users of equipment available for rental. Tiffany earned a PhD in Anthropology and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Washington. She was also a CSDE Pre-Doctoral Fellow and completed the Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods. She returned to CSDE in 2022 after her postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Sydney Collier
Undergraduate Researcher
Sydney is interested in evolution and genetics. Sh is specifically interested in how we can use genetics and evolutionary theory to find cures for medical diseases. She expects to graduate in 2020.
Amy Lam
Undergraduate Researcher
Carmen Hové, PhD
Graduate Student
Carmen Hové graduated with her PhD in 2022. She studied human physiology from an evolutionary perspective, with special emphasis on topics relevant to medicine.
Kenna Sherman
Undergraduate Researcher
Kenna is passionate about behavioral neuroscience and genetics. Specifically, she is interested in mental illness and using genomics to find cures for complex diseases such as cancer. She expects to graduate in June 2021.
Nikki Torno
Lab Technician
Nikki Torno is a lab technician working in Dr. Boddy’s lab. Nikki studied biological anthropology and linguistics at UCSB, and she graduated in June of 2022. Nikki enjoys learning about genetics, evolution, and data analysis, so she particularly loves being able to combine all these research interests in studying microchimerism.
Maya Szafraniec, MA
Graduate Student
Maya graduated with her MA in 2022. Her work focused on fetal-maternal conflict through the lens of comparative life history, ecology, and evolutionary theory. She used comparative biology to examine the consequences of these trade offs on proximal impacts to health and disease, as well as on larger evolutionary questions. Areas where these conflicts may occur include fetal microchimerism and placenta biology.
Olivia Mendoza
ACE Undergraduate Researcher
Olivia is passionate about cognitive neuroscience, psychopathology, and medical disease research, and she hopes to incorporate computer programming into her future research. She is also heavily involved in the performing arts, specifically music, and is interested in combining research and music in the future. She expects to graduate in June 2022.
Emilie Risha
Undergraduate Researcher
Emilie Risha is an undergraduate biological anthropology student at UCSB, assisting in research on fetal and maternal microchimerism. She enjoys learning about pregnancy, human biology and evolution, and how ancestrally-derived structures operate in modern contexts. In the future, she hopes to work directly with birthing people and their families as a doula or midwife, to support the individuals’ full well-being and autonomy in birth and in life.
Mary Boyd
ACE Undergraduate Researcher
Mary is a math major minoring in anthropology. She enjoys learning about genetics and natural selection and how it has shaped the world we live in today. She is currently working on studying the development of cancer in animals at the London Zoo to further understand the causes of cancer and its potential solutions.
@ amy_boddy
