The African Paleosciences Laboratory depends on a vibrant and diverse volunteer and student intern community. Below are some of the lab's more recent community members

Summer 2023 high school interns

Avi Zimmerman is a rising high school senior at the Nightingale-Bamford School, and a part of NYU’s ARISE summer internship program. Their research interests include anthropology, linguistics, and cognitive and behavioral psychology. 

Nilla Wahab is a rising senior from Townsend Harris High School and begins her research as part of NYU’s ARISE program. She is interested in studying anthropology, biomechanics, and evolutionary biology.

Fernando Prieto Lin is a junior majoring in Journalism and History with minors in Anthropology and BEMT (Business, Media, Entertainment, and Technology). He is interested in the evolutionary history of humans, both as a species as well as their social constructs. 

Brian Woody is a Religious Studies and Classics double major and an Indigenous Studies and South Asian Studies double minor. He works in the lab to become more familiar with archaeology, as often times studying religion primarily relies on material or archaeological evidence. 

Kreyleen Alcantara is an undergraduate senior majoring in Global Public Health and Anthropology. She is interested in biocultural anthropology and is investigating how the human sociocultural contect plays a role in public health disparities. She is also interested in learning how stone tool technology played a role in early social dynamics and what that meant for improving population health in terms of meeting present-day social determinants of health. 

Keegan is an undergraduate junior majoring in Anthropology. He is interested in the morphological evolution of early language and communication, as well as the history of cultural transmision in hominin societies. He wants to understand and explore the link between tool use and the reproduction of knowledge. 

Adela Cebeiro is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at New York University. Her research focuses on reconstructing the mechanisms involved in the emergence and evolution of primate (human and non-human) stone tool technology. Overall, she is interested in primate archaeology, the anatomical and cognitive diversity of early hominins, primate behavioral ecology and lithic technology

Caleb Chen is an Archaeological Anthropology PhD Student at New York University. He is interested in using experimental approaches and artifact analysis to understand how hunter-gatherers used lithic technology. His research focuses on understanding why similar lithic technologies occur on a near-global scale 17,000-12,000 years ago.

Alex Gregory is a PhD student at New York University in the anthropology department. Alex is interested in how emerging methods of quantitative data analysis can help to understand, reconstruct, and explain prehistoric human behaviors. His research focuses on the effect territories had on how prehistoric foragers made stone tools in Africa during the Holocene. The regions involved in this research span southern and central Africa and include the countries of South Africa and Malawi

Nina Schotland is a recent NYU graduate where she studied Anthropology and Design. She is fascinated by the intersectionality of biological and cultural anthropology. More specifically, her interests surround primatology and the relationship between hominins and material culture. Nina began working in the lab as a means of understanding more about stone tool technology as a driving force for human evolution and their impact on modern human culture. 

Pieper Grantham is an undergraduate junior in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a concentration in archaeology, art history, museum studies, and cultural heritage law. A self-proclaimed lover of all things dusty, she is interested in hominin migration patterns and skull morphology.

Sean Gilbert is an undergraduate sophomore studying psychology on a pre-med track. He is primarily interested in the clear and unclear connections that can be drawn about human sociological and psychological development from studying the progression of stone tools and other archaeological information. 

Will Steger is an undergraduate senior majoring in Anthropology minoring in history at New York University. He is interested in hominin and primate craniodental morphology, understanding phylogenetic relationships, and paleoanthropological theory. He intends to pursue a PhD in anthropology following graduation.

Phoebe Halper is an undergraduate senior in anthropology at New York University.  She is interested in biological anthropology and studying the hominin fossil record as a means to answer questions about human evolution. She is also specifically interested in encounters and interbreeding between archaic hominins

Abby Roll is a junior majoring in anthropology and psychology. She is studying stone tool social learning in the African Paleosciences Laboratory because she is interested in understanding the evolution of human cognition through historical and modern skill-sets. 

Reid Worroll is a Masters Student of Biological Anthropology at New York University, focusing on human skeletal biology. He is interested in the application of both comparative morphological and experimental research as a means of examining the the complex intersections of hominin cultural and biological development. 

Zayd Salahuddin is a sophomore majoring in Global Liberal Studies (GLS) with a concentration in Law, Ethics, History, and Religion (LEHR) at New York University. He is also a pre-medical student minoring in Chemistry and is interested in hominin biocultural evolution, as well as the behavioral learning processes associated with hominin evolution from a psycho-social perspective.

Tammy Xing is a junior majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Genetics. She is interested in biological anthropology and learning about the evolution of different hominin traits.


Evan Wilson is a PhD student studying paleoanthropology and Stone Age archaeology at the CUNY Graduate Center as part of the New York Consortium of Evolutionary Primatology. Their research focuses on hominin-environment interactions and the coevolution of biology and culture, particularly the role of technology in the emergence of humankind.

Tyler Phillips is an undergraduate senior majoring in anthropology and minoring in archaeology. He is interested in paleoarchaeology as well as Classical and medieval archaeology. He is especially curious in researching and constructing the family tree of extinct human species, and how their interrelationships shaped modern human morphology.

Kazi Nur is an undergraduate junior studying Biological Anthropology with a double minor in Chemistry and Public Health. She is interested in learning about the practice of early societies, factors influencing the evolution of communication and evolutionary biology concerning diseases, and how they emerge/ reemerge, affecting human health. She joined the African Paleosciences Lab to explore her interest in tool use and its relation to hominin evolution and social behavior.

Caroline Shore is an undergraduate sophomore studying biological anthropology and public health at New York University.  She is interested in hominin evolution and tool use, as well as the evolutionary biology of human diseases and how interactions between ancient humans caused disease to spread.

MiKaelah Freeman is an undergraduate senior majoring in anthropology and politics. She is interested in biological anthropology and learning about the impact of climate and environment on hominin evolution. More specifically, she is interested in learning about how tool making and mobility needs in changing climates have influenced the evolution of hominin skeletal morphology.