Kelly Zamudio is the Doherty Chair in Molecular Biology in the Department of Integrative Biology at the

University of Texas Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. She was formerly the Goldwin Smith Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and Curator of Herpetology at the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates.

Education

Zamudio completed a B.A. in Biology at

University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

in 1991. She earned a Ph.D. from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

in 1996.

Research

Th
Zamudio lab
also known as KZ lab, supports research in the origin and maintenance of biodiversity in

reptiles Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the Class (biology), class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsid, sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, Squamata, squamates (lizar ...

and

amphibians Amphibians are four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arbore ...

. Zamudio, her students, and collaborators have been instrumental in understanding population decline faced by amphibians, with a particular focus on the roles played by disease resistance and the toll of human activity on the landscape. Zamudio's academic interests lie in the fields of

population biology The term population biology has been used with different meanings. In 1971 Edward O. Wilson ''et al''. used the term in the sense of applying mathematical models to population genetics, community ecology, and population dynamics. Alan Hastings us ...

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and pop ...

systematics Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees (synonyms: cladograms, phylogenetic tre ...

, and the

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

of conservation, where she is particularly interested in the links between patterns of geographic genetic differentiation and attributes of the ecology and life history of organisms such as

mating systems A mating system is a way in which a group is structured in relation to sexual behaviour. The precise meaning depends upon the context. With respect to animals, the term describes which males and females mate under which circumstances. Recognised ...

, dispersal, and

demography Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and Population dynamics, dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups ...

. She was also an early adopter at Cornell in th
Active Learning Initiative
which improved student outcomes for members of underrepresented groups. As of April 2020, Zamudio has published over 150 papers which have together received over 9,000 citations.

Awards and honors

* 2019 Elected Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. * 2018 Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at

. * 2017 Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellow at

References

External links

Lab Website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zamudio, Kelly 21st-century American biologists American women zoologists Women evolutionary biologists Living people American evolutionary biologists Cornell University faculty Year of birth missing (living people)