Welcome to my website
A historian and archaeologist by training, I am currently a Research Collaborator in the Human Origins and Archaeobiology Programs at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.
My research focuses on the cultural and biological evolution of modern humans in East Africa during the Middle and Later Stone Ages. With over 25 years of field work experience, I am currently the director of an archaeological project, funded by the National Geographic Society and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, that has been surveying and documenting Upper Pleistocene and Holocene sites in the central highlands and southeastern region of Ethiopia.
At the Smithsonian I have developed a digital catalogue of the dentitions of east African ungulates (hoofed mammals), which has been widely used by biologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists.
I am also a GIS professional, with a Master's degree in geospatial technology from the MPS GIS Program of the University of Maryland.
For over a decade, I have used GIS and remote sensing applications in my research, and I have helped to design the GIS component of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.