Professor Cynthia Beall presenting the inaugural Kenneth A.R. Kennedy Lecture in Human Evolution at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY on Aprl 9, 2019, with introductions by Charles Aquadro and Jere Haas.
Lecture title: "Tibetan adaptations to high altitude"
Professor Beall is Distinguished University Professor and the Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. She is a biological anthropologist working on human adaptation to the environment and integrating genes, physiology, and Darwinian fitness. Beall's research focuses on explaining why Andean, Tibetan and East African highlanders differ in their patterns of biological adaptation to the unavoidable, severe stress of high-altitude hypoxia. This entails fieldwork in mountainous regions of Bolivia, Ethiopia, Nepal, Mongolia, Peru, and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China where millions of people live at altitudes of 10,000' or more. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Science, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).