Stephanie Schnorr
How wild tubers compare with cultivars in nutritional composition, contribution to health, and microbiome
Stephanie Schnorr is a biological anthropologist who studies the role of diet and the gut microbiome in human evolution. Stephanie began this line of inquiry during her dissertation research at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology by studying wild underground storage organs (or tubers) consumed by modern human hunter-gatherers, in which the microbiome plays a critical role. She has since focused her post-doctoral research on understanding how the human microbiome may be an extremely adaptable system that tracks human environment and lifestyle, and how this may have impacted human dispersal and diversification during human evolution. Importantly, Stephanie, along with colleagues, works to promote joint efforts in anthropology and microbiology in order to tackle these questions.