Advait Mahesh Jukar ’11
Advait M. Jukar ’11, PhD, is assistant curator and professor of vertebrate paleontology in the department of natural history at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida. At the museum, he oversees one of the largest collections of fossil vertebrates in the world. For over a decade, Advait has conducted research in, curated collections for, and built exhibitions at major museums such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the Yale Peabody Museum, where he also holds research appointments. He is passionate about natural history museums and views them as tools to bring people closer to nature. He is also a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
Spanning 200 million years and ranging from North America to Eurasia and Africa, his research focuses on ice age extinctions, the evolution of terrestrial mammals, and the ecology of dinosaurs. He also has a soft spot for elephants, both living and extinct, and is a global expert on their evolution and diversity. He has conducted field research in Asia and North America and most recently discovered new dinosaurs in India. As someone deeply familiar with extinction, Advait is also committed to conservation. He is an associate at the Lovejoy Center for Bridging Biodiversity, Conservation Science & Policy, where he develops strategies to advance the center’s conservation goals and leads their fellowship program.
Prior to his appointment as the curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Advait was a professor at the University of Arizona. He has also held the prestigious Deep Time Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the Gaylord Donnelley Postdoctoral Environmental Fellowship at Yale.
Advait received his BA in Biology from Reed in 2011 and wrote his thesis under Robert Kaplan on the ecology and evolution of a Korean frog. He received a master’s and doctorate from George Mason University, where he studied a variety of topics from Caribbean coral reefs to South Asian fossil mammals. He is the co-chair of the All For Reed committee and a Reed College Alumni Board member.