Expertise
Teaching Assistant (Life Science, Principles of Biology I and II, and Form Feeds Function in Vertebrate Evolution); Experience with X ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM); Using High Speed X ray Biplanar Machine
Research Interests
Functional morphology of vertebrate animals; Jaw and tongue movements during feeding; Veterinary medicine
Education
- M.S.: Vertebrates Morphology, University of Antwerp, Belgium; Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany
- B.S.: Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM), Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Selected Awards and Honors
- A two year Erasmus Mundus Scholarship funded by the European Union (EU).
Selected Publications
- Rhythmic chew cycles with distinct fast and slow phases are ancestral to gnathostomes. PMID: 37839454.
- Do salamanders chew? An X-ray reconstruction of moving morphology analysis of ambystomatid intraoral feeding behaviours. PMID: 37839445.
- A salamander that chews using complex, three-dimensional mandible movements. PMID: 31988164.
Selected Presentations
- A kinematic analysis of intra-oral prey processing mechanism in African lungfish. Presented at NERVES, Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Research Currently in Progress
My research examines the functional integration, biomechanics and muscle physiology of jaw and tongue movements during feeding, particularly focusing on lungfishes. I am currently using a comparative approach to better understand the evolution of food processing associated with water-to-land transitions of feeding systems.
I am also interested in veterinary medicine particularly understanding morphological/anatomical disorders occurred congenital.