Doug Boyer

Doug Boyer is an assistant professor at Duke University in the Evolutionary Anthropology department. He earned his PhD from Stony Brook University in 2009 and has been at Duke since 2012.

He is interested in the early phases of primate evolutionary history, and how anatomical diversity reflects an evolutionary history of selective pressures more generally. He studies evidence from fossils and comparative anatomy, often using new bioinformatic analytical methods developed with collaborators at Duke in order to characterize shape variation among 3D digital models of bones and then reconstruct evolutionary patterns.

In order to provide access to the raw data underlying his research (3D models of fossil and recent bones) to colleagues and to the public for research and education, he designed the MorphoSource, an open access repository where researchers and public can view, download, and upload data on anatomical structures and whole organisms. The broader goals of the MorphoSource are to increase the amount of anatomical data available for research, to increase the inclusiveness of the community that can use these data, and to align the interests of individual researchers and museums with a larger goal of advancing scientific understanding by providing tools to gain scholarly credit through data sharing.