Dr. Hillary Maddin

• In-person event
• 4440Q, Carleton Technology and Training Centre, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

• Contact
• Alex Wong, alex.wong@carleton.ca

Title: TBA

Dr. Hillary Maddin, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University

Friday, January 31^st – 3:30PM – CTTC 4440Q

Faculty Host: Alex Wong

Paleontology • Evolution • Developmental Biology

SEMINAR ABSTRACT TBA.

Biography from Website: Hillary Maddin’s research aims to understand the origin and maintenance of organismal diversity over large time scales. In particular, Hillary is interested in the evolution of cranial morphology and how patterns of relatedness, and developmental and functional constraints underlie the origin of morphological diversity observed among animals living today. The focus of Hillary’s Banting research will be to investigate the influence of brain morphology on the cranial form of tetrapod animals. Whereas the developmental aspects of brain-cranium interactions are areas of intense study in mammals (e.g., the mouse), largely due to medical interests, evolutionary aspects of these interactions remain less well understood. By combining analyses of the fossil record and lab-based analyses of development, the nature of these interactions and their role in cranial evolution will be elucidated in a complementary tetrapod lineage, the amphibians. This research will provide new information about the conservation of brain-cranium interactions across tetrapod animals, and has the potential to provide insight into processes of genetic and morphogenetic evolution of the tetrapod cranium in general. Hillary obtained her PhD from the University of Calgary, and recently completed an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, in the department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.