David Raichlen, Associate Professor

Curriculum Vitae

My research centers on understanding the impacts of locomotion and exercise on human evolution. I use experimental biomechanics, comparative methods, and field work to reconstruct physical activity in human ancestors and how these shifts impact health and well-being today. Shifts in these locomotor behaviors define the hominin lineage (e.g., bipedalism) and help explain evolutionary transitions that led to the genus Homo (e.g., endurance exercise). The focus of my research is to understand how and why these locomotor transitions occured and how they impacted our evolutionary history.

CURRENT GRADUATE STUDENTS:

James Webber, Ph.D. Student

James is exploring the evoutionary relationship between exercise and cognition. James uses virtual reality to immerse research participants in virtual foraging tasks and examines how exercise affects cognitive performance and how cognition affects exercise performance.

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Margaret "Katie" Sayre, M.A. Student

Katie is interested in the evolutionbary physiology of aging around the world. Katie examines how transitions to highly physically active lifestyles influenced the evolution of human aging, and how aging differs among small-scale societies.

CURRENT UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS:

Tyler Marx (Physiology Major)

Tyler is examining the effects of high levels of aerobic exercise on patterns of physical activity using wearable accelerometers.

Alicea Riley (Anthropology Major)

Alicea is measuring the effects of pregnancy on human walking biomechanics to test hypotheses about the interaction between bipedalism and pregnancy in early hominins.

ALUMNI:

Adam Foster, Ph.D.

(currently an Assistant Professor at Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine)