Kelly Pfeiler

Kelly Pfeiler is a 2020-2024 Self Graduate Fellow and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow pursuing a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas. She received a B.Sc. with honors in Botany (2018) and an M.Sc. with distinction in Biology (2020) at Humboldt State University. Kelly has always been interested in plant biology, but during her undergraduate and graduate careers she became fascinated by the fossil record and what it can tell us about the evolution of life and the deep history of plant diversification. For her master’s thesis, she described two new Early Devonian (390 million years old) fossil plants that exhibit woody growth. Kelly also discovered her passion for teaching at Humboldt State University where she lectured General Botany during her master’s degree. For her doctoral research, Kelly is interested in understanding macroevolutionary patterns and phylogenetic relationships in plants as revealed by the integration of information from living and fossil plants.

Mentors: Brian Atkinson, Assistant Professor and, Kelly Matsunaga, Thomas N. Taylor Assistant Professor