Achievement

IGERT student Erin Marie Williams is working with an IGERT faculty member (Lucas) and with a team of engineers and physicists from the National Institute of Standards and technology to understand the role of raw material properties in generating forces that affect the upper limb. She is also working with IGERT faculty (Richmond) in a biomechanical study of upper limb forces during knapping of stone in both the modern condition and in a restraint which simulates some aspects of the pre-human (ape and australopithecine condition). This research has been awarded two doctoral dissertation research awards: one from NSF and one from the Wenner Gren Foundation. Preliminary results were presented both at an IGERT-sponsored symposium in New York in collaboration with the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology