DR. WINKLER COMPLETES DEGREE

TITUSVILLE, Sept. 21 -- Linda Winkler, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology and biology at the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, recently completed a Master of Public Health degree at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Winkler examined human infectious disease rates in her master’s paper, “An Analysis of Genetic Diversity and Disease Prevalence in Nicaragua Using a Monkey Model.”  Winkler’s research stemmed from her interest in genetic diversity and disease among monkey populations in Central America.

Winkler has studied howling monkeys in Nicaragua and Costa Rica since 1995.  She has conducted two capture-release projects on monkeys in Nicaragua to assess their health, take blood samples for disease and genetic analysis, and tag them for further study.  She and her students have presented results of this research at the National Meetings of Physical Anthropologists.

In addition, Winkler has presented and published in a Canadian symposium volume entitled “Investigation of Animal Movement.”

She has developed and is presently teaching study abroad courses on Nicaragua Cultural and Natural History and Primate Behavior.  Twenty-three Pitt students and sixty students from other universities have participated since they began in 1998.

The Nicaraguan study abroad course will be offered again during spring term 2001-2002, and the Primate Behavior course will be offered summer 2002 in Costa Rica.

Winkler is a member of Sigma Xi, the national research honorary, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and the International Primatological Association.  She serves as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and Addison Wesley Longman Publishers.

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