HEALTH AND BIOBEHAVIOR LABORATORY
exploring stress, resilience, & bio-behavioral adaptation to novel, harsh, and unpredictable environments
Ongoing Projects
Currently recruiting
women 35 and up!
Expedition Acclimatization
Philadelphia Heat*Stress
https://redcap.link/flash2026
Homo naledi Energetics
How do humans biobehaviorally acclimatize to short-duration energetically demanding expeditions?
We are interested in studying humans who live, work, or travel in extreme environments, from damp subterranean caves to frigid mountain tops to the searing heat of the desert. Studying stress responses at extremes help untangle how some people seem to thrive in high-stress environments.
What are the health, biological, and behavioral impacts of an ever-increasing heat stress on Philadelphians in a warming world?
Our goal is to better understand the intersection of heat stress and psychological stress in the Philadelphia population to inform stress mitigation tactics, in a city where people share geography, but experience vastly different social structures, resource access, and health vulnerability.
What is the psychobiological response of navigating a cave and what can it tell us about our human ancestors?
We examine how energetically costly it is for contemporary humans to navigate the Rising Star Cave System to estimate the potential energetic costs to Homo naledi individuals depositing the remains.
Our Collaborators
Clare Super, PhD
Research and Analytics Specialist
Working America
Augustín Fuentes, PhD
Professor of Anthropology
Princeton University
The Lee Berger Foundation
Foundation for Research and Exploration in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa
Andy Kim, PhD
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley
Caroline Jones, PhD
Lecturer of Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania