I am Robert W. Burroughs, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago with the Committee on Evolutionary Biology and a Graduate Student In-Residence with the Integrative Research Center at The Field Museum.
My real passion is for understanding how evolution has shaped the amazing plethora of function and form found in the organisms we collectively refer to as Life. My research program is focused on understanding how evolutionary mechanisms work in the present and past. I do this by integrating data and methodologies from across multiple sub-disciplines of natural science. Primarily I utilize methods and data from vertebrate paleontology, evolutionary morphology, evolutionary-developmental biology, phylogeography, and population genetics. This requires me to utilize techniques from geological sciences, biological sciences, and first principles of natural sciences.
I work most frequently with small mammals from the Quaternary-Present (the past 2.6 million years) and with turtles from the Paleogene-Present (the past 65 million years). I believe that integrative approaches are the key to understanding how evolutionary mechanisms work.