Prof. Nadia B. Fröbisch, PhD

I consider myself an evolutionary biologist, whereas my education as well as my research foci contain elements of both paleontology and extant biology, especially ontogeny and evolutionary developmental biology. After my “Vordiplom” (pre-diploma) at the University of Bonn, I spent two semesters at the University of Calgary as an international visiting student, before returning to the University of Bonn to finish my diploma (MSc equivalent) in Geology/paleontology there. My diploma research focused on Middle Triassic ichthyosaurs and marine reptiles remain close to my heart, although my current research focuses on other aspects. In my PhD thesis, I switched my research focus to amphibians and worked on various aspects of the ontogeny and phylogeny of dissorophoid amphibians. I was supervised by Bob Carroll and Hans Larsson and the fantastic time at McGill University influenced my career positively in many ways. After a brief, but no less fun postdoc in Robert Reisz lab at the University of Toronto, I received a DFG (German Research Foundation) research fellowship to join Neil Shubin’s lab at the University of Chicago. There, I focused on aspects of salamander limb development and evolution and benefited greatly from the many great exchanges. From Chicago, I moved to Berlin to a non-tenured assistant professor position in Johannes Müller’s group. There, I had the opportunity to further develop my own project ideas and received a DFG Emmy Noether Research group allowing me to establish my own independent working group. Since 2017, I am cross appointed professor at the department of Biology, Humboldt University Berlin and the Museum für Naturkunde, where I have the pleasure to work together with many talented students, staff members and collaborators.