Robert Cieri

Professor Cieri is an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in how animal evolution is constrained and guided by interactions with the physical world. Prior to joining Yale, he was a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellow studying how lung structure and airflow biomechanics evolved with diving and explosive ventilation in marine mammals at the University of British Columbia with Robert Shadwick. His PhD research investigated the evolution of unidirectional pulmonary airflow patterns in monitor lizards using open source computational fluid dynamics simulations. He also used XROMM to investigate the evolution of the axial skeleton and aspiration breathing in tetrapods. In his first postdoc, he used musculoskeletal models to ask how biomechanical scaling drove locomotor innovations and adaptive evolution in Australian varanid lizards. Currently, he’s working to connect marine mammal science with First Nations persons in British Columbia. He has a passion for integrating teaching and research in organismal biology and has a proven track record for conducting high-quality research with undergraduates.