Welcome to the Fins and Limbs Lab!

My research applies biomechanics and physiology as explanatory tools to address the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. Specifically, I integrate physics and engineering with anatomy to study the performance of biological systems in response to the physical demands placed by the environment. How physiological features of the musculoskeletal system drives whole-organismal performance can then be used to answer fundamental questions in ecology and evolution. Fishes have been an important study system in my research due to their impressive diversity, but my research is driven by the scientific question.

I apply interdisciplinary approaches involving theoretical and empirical methods, including:
  • Evaluating biological form-function relationships on living animals with biomechanical experiments, 
  • Deriving the physical principles of complex biological systems with mathematics and statistics, 
  • Developing computational models of the musculoskeletal system to determine how animals perform different behaviors, and 
  • Estimating phenotypic selection with methods from quantitative genetics. 

​Thanks for stopping by!  


Note: The Fins and Limbs lab has recently moved to George Washington University in Washington D.C.! We are actively recruiting:
  • Ph.D. students to start in Fall 2020 (deadline to apply is Dec. 1, 2019),
  • a lab tech to start in Fall 2019 (start date negotiable; more details to follow), and
  • postdocs! I am happy to also chat with prospective applicants who would be interested in submitting fellowship applications (e.g., NSF PRFB) in Fall 2019 to begin work in Fall 2020.

Letters of recommendation: If you are seeking to request a letter of recommendation, please read the information at http://bit.ly/Kawano_LetterRequest. 





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Hanging out with Eryops at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History!
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