William Jungers
Chairperson

Dr.Maureen O'Leary
Graduate Program Director
maureen.oleary@stonybrook.edu

The Department of Anatomical Sciences, within the Health Sciences Center, offers a multidisciplinary graduate program leading to the Ph.D. degree. Students receive comprehensive training to prepare them for teaching and research in the areas of evolutionary morphology, functional morphology, musculoskeletal biology, systematics, and vertebrate paleontology. Graduate students are guided through a program of courses designed for their particular needs. In this regard, the Department of Anatomical Sciences interacts not only with other departments in the School of Medicine but also with those in the College of Arts and Sciences (e.g., Departments of Anthropology, Ecology and Evolution, and Geosciences), as well as other regional doctoral programs (American Museum of Natural History, City University of New York).

The program is concerned with the analysis and interpretation of gross vertebrate structure in relation to adaptation and systematics. Training and research focus on (a) an evolutionary perspective in the analysis of morphology, including the roles of function, structure, and phylogenetic history, and (b) the structural adaptations of bone as a loadbearing tissue, including the physiologic mechanisms of osteogenesis and osteolysis. Both the locomotor and the craniodental systems are regions of current interest & investigation within the program. Several faculty in the Department specialize in the application of experimental and quantitative techniques to the analysis of the relationship between form and function. Studies of skeletal adaptations are also facilitated by collaboration with the Musculoskeletal Research Laboratory of the Department of Orthopaedics. Questions of systematics are approached at many different levels, ranging from alpha taxonomy to higherorder relationships utilizing such techniques as phylogenetic systematics.