Posted on 16 September 2013
It is my pleasure to announce that on October 24th, the Rohlf Medal and a cash prize will be awarded to Prof. Paul O’Higgins. He is the Chair of Anatomy, the University of York, and head of the Centre for Anatomical and Human Sciences, Hull York Medical School, England. The Rohlf Medal was established in 2006 by the family and friends of Distinguished Prof. F. James Rohlf, Stony Brook University, to recognize excellence in the development of morphometric methods and their application to shape analysis in the biomedical sciences. It is awarded every two years.
This award is in recognition that Prof. O’Higgins has expanded the boundaries of paleoanthropology through his long-standing interest in the quantification of biological form to understand animal function and evolution. He has been an innovator in methods that merge cutting-edge technologies of imaging and biomechanics with statistical methods of shape analysis. He is currently exploring the use of computed tomography and bioimaging to investigate the effects of stress on the shape of anatomical structures. His empirical research explores links between variation in skeletal structure, evolutionary history, function, and development. Professor O’Higgins has also devoted considerable effort to developing software that makes these approaches accessible to other investigators in the field. Throughout his career, he has trained numerous scholars in quantitative morphology, including the latest morphometric approaches.
The medal will be awarded at a lecture given by Prof. O’Higgins at 4:00 on October 24th in Lecture Hall 2 in the Wang Center at Stony Brook University. The title of his lecture will be “The measure of things: pattern process and morphometry.” The lecture is also part of the Provost Lecture Series at Stony Brook University and is co-sponsored by the Rohlf Medal Fund and the Department of Ecology and Evolution.
Some additional information is available at: http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/rohlf_medal/