Matthew Ravosa, PhD, professor and director of graduate studies in pathology and anatomical sciences at MU, was recently elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.

Ravosa became a fellow on Feb. 14, 2009, during the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago. He was one of 15 individuals nationwide appointed to the organization’s section on anthropology.

Fellows are elected by their peers to recognize efforts to advance or apply science in their field. It takes three letters of support from AAAS fellows to nominate an individual. It was Ravosa’s MU colleague Carol Ward, PhD, professor of pathology and anatomical sciences, who coordinated the nomination process out of admiration for his multidisciplinary work and leadership in the fields of paleontology, experimental biology and mammalian evolution.

Ward said Ravosa’s work investigating the evolution, function and development of the mammalian skull has particularly important implications for medicine and dentistry in terms of understanding bone and cartilage mechanobiology and aging.

“He looks at how an animal’s diet affects the biology its whole head, and how different patterns of chewing affect the health of the temporomandibular joint (jaw joint),” Ward said. “The better we can understand it, the better clinicians can come up with treatments for TMJ disorder. His work is neat because it has direct biological importance but it also has applications for lots of human and other mammalian biology.”

Ravosa arrived at the University of Missouri School of Medicine in December 2006 from Northwestern University, where he served as professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine’s department of cell and molecular biology. He remains a research associate in the department of zoology, mammals division, at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. His research at MU emphasizes a multidisciplinary focus on the evolution, function and development of the mammalian skull and feeding apparatus. Ravosa said his research integrates animal models, experimental analyses and cutting-edge techniques to approach age-old evolutionary questions from a fresh perspective.

“I was really excited, pleased and humbled,” Ravosa said. “It’s nice to realize my peers think highly enough of my work to nominate and elect me.”

The AAAS is an international non-profit organization with nearly 120,000 individual and institutional members and 262 affiliates. It serves 10 million scientists in fields ranging from plant biology to dentistry. It publishes the journal Science, the largest paid-circulation peer-reviewed general science journal in the world.