2006-2007 - The Field Museum

Thorsten Lumbsch of the Botany Department was also promoted to Associate Curator with tenure during
the past year, after three years at the Museum. Thorsten is a specialist in the study of lichens, a primitive
group of plants involving a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae. He is amazingly prolific,
having published over 220 scientific papers, among the most recent being an article in Nature on the
early evolution of fungi based on molecular data. Since his arrival Thorsten has supervised numerous
postdoctoral scientists and grad students, and has taught courses at the University of Chicago and the
University of Illinois at Chicago.
Also promoted to Associate Curator with tenure in 2006 was our dinosaur specialist, Peter Makovicky in
the Department of Geology. During Pete's five years at the Museum, he has established himself as a
leading authority in the systematics, evolution and comparative anatomy of non-avian dinosaurs. He has
fieldwork projects in China, Mongolia, and the western United States, numerous publications, including
eight in the prestigious journal Nature, two major research grants from the National Science Foundation,
and has been very active in the training of students.
Maureen Kearney was also promoted to Associate Curator with tenure, in the Department of
Zoology/Division of Amphibians and Reptiles. Maureen has been at the Field for five years, and is a
noted expert on the morphology, systematics, and evolution of reptiles. Maureen has secured two major
research grants from the NSF, brought in a major herpetological collection from Carl Gans (a well-known
herpetologist of many years), and has maintained a vigorous rate of publication. She too is extremely
active in education, advising two postdoctoral fellows, serving on five graduate student committees, and
serving as an Adjunct Curator at the University of Chicago where she teaches regularly.
In addition to those promoted to Associate Curator in 2006, Chapurukha Kusimba was promoted to the
rank of Full Curator in the Department of Anthropology. Chap is recognized as one of the leading
Africanist archaeologists of his generation. He has maintained an ongoing archaeological and
ethnological research program on the preindustrial trade relationships within the Old World, and he has
had an active field program in Africa and Europe that is now expanding into India. Like his other
colleagues in Anthropology, Chap holds an adjunct appointment and teaches in the University of Illinois at
Chicago Anthropology Department, and has led an archaeology field school in Kenya for many years.
Our faculty is not only strong, but growing. In 2007 we will welcome a new Assistant Curator of Fishes,
and searches are underway for curators of Insects, Fossil Plants, and Fossil Mammals. Each of our 38
curators hold adjunct appointments with at least one university, nearby and abroad, all serve on—or
direct—one or more dissertation committees, and most are active in classroom teaching. Besides the 70
“Resident Graduate students” (those who conduct primary research and have offices at the Museum)
supervised by Field Museum curators, there are another 80-odd graduate students at local and
international institutions who can count at least one Field Museum curator as an advisor. In addition, our
curators taught more than a dozen courses in 2006 at local universities—University of Chicago, University
of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern—with courses including “Primate Evolution,” “Evolutionary,
Environmental, and Conservation Biology,” “Quantitative Phylogenetics” and “Comparative Anatomy of
the Vertebrates.”
Our formal relationships with both the University of Chicago and Northwestern (regarding teaching,
advising, and deposit of specimens) date to the mid-1940s. The relationship with the University of
Chicago has been particularly robust, most notably the long participation of Field Museum biologists and
paleontologists in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, where 21 FM scientists hold adjunct
appointments, comprising nearly a third of the CEB faculty. The U of C-FM relationship was further
strengthened in 2006 with Neil Shubin taking on a split appointment as Provost of Academic Affairs at
The Field Museum and Associate Dean of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology at the University of
Chicago. Neil is a widely-published paleontologist whose work has yielded new insights into the fin-tolimb
transition in the early evolution of tetrapods (vertebrates that can walk on land). He has conducted
fieldwork in Greenland, the High Arctic of Canada, Argentina, China, Morocco, Nova Scotia, and the
deserts of the U.S. As Field Museum Provost and University of Chicago Associate Dean, Neil provides a
unique perspective on external institutional relationships and on the strategic direction of the Museum’s
world-class research and training programs.
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