I am excited to have joined the faculty of the Department of Geology at San Jose State University in August 2008.

My area of interest is paleontology, which is the study of ancient organisms, how they lived, and their evolutionary histories. I use the fossil record to explore the biological and environmental factors and connections responsible for macroevolutionary changes and extinction.

My research program has three major components. First, systematics, or the study of biodiversity. In this area, I have focused on circumscribing and describing diversity in Cenozoic cone snails (Conus) and Paleozoic arthropods. Second, phylogenetics, or the study of the relationships of organisms. In this area, my research has involved not just reconstructing hypotheses of relationships, but also exploring new ways in which to integrate biological information (e.g., DNA) with paleontological data. Third, I am interested in using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to quantitatively research ancient distributional patterns of organisms in order to relate those biogeographical patterns to macroevolutionary changes.