Great time last night listening to Isaac Kotler at the Continental Club in Greensboro

Ciao, Italy! Nous voyageons à Paris!

Students in the Evolutionary Medicine and Paleopathology Study Abroad course arrived in Venice last night. We had a nice dinner together and a little tour of some of the 118 islands that make up Venice.

Thank you to Valentina Giuffra, Giulia Rincommi, and Antonio Fornaciari for inviting me to give a keynote address at the Human-Environment Interactions during the Late Antique little Ice Age Congress. They organized a fantastic meeting at the University of Pisa and it was my pleasure to attend.

Giving a keynote at this conference in Pisa tomorrow. Really looking forward to hearing from these colleagues about their research and sharing my perspective on climate change and paleopathology.

Lizzie Wade (writer for @aaas.org Science Magazine) just sent me a copy of her new book, which features some of my research on the Indus civilization. I am saving it for the plane trip to Italy next week but I’m so excited to read it!

Our work on Bronze Age leprosy in Oman is featured in this article in Science Magazine this week. Best part? Two high school students did the scanning with me—learned to identify signs of the disease, use the micro CT, and the software to reconstruct the data. They’re at Chapel Hill Biology now!

First graduate student graduation from the Robbins Schug Human Diversity Lab at UNCG! Congratulations Darius Thompson!!!!

Measles likely came from cows (via rinderpest) around the 6th century BCE. For 2,500 years, we didn’t evolve superhuman resistance—children just died. Real protection only came in the 1960s, with vaccines. Our superpower isn’t evolving into superhumans. It’s outthinking pathogens.

It’s Science Everywhere at UNCG! Join 5000 people from all over North Carolina for an awesome free event celebrating science! We’ve got over 60 activities and lab tours, a robot building competition, a robot parade, the Native American Student Association Powwow, and food trucks on campus from 12-4.

The Human Diversity Lab @UNCG was founded in 2023 to explore how communities adapt to environmental change & to champion ethical, equitable solutions for sustainable development. Through bioarchaeology & paleopathology, we’re uncovering lessons from the past to inform a just and resilient tomorrow.