Two experts in human evolution, the first US scientists recruited by Catalonia

BarcelonaAshley Hammond and Sergio Almécija are the names of the first two researchers to arrive—and settle—in Catalonia after fleeing the restrictive policies of Donald Trump that are stifling research in the United States. The two paleoanthropologists—the branch of anthropology that studies human evolution through the analysis of fossils—arrived at the end of 2015 and have now joined the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) as ICREA researchers. Hammond and Almécija have joined the Catalan research network through the Talent Bridge program, a plan that, as reported by ARA, The government devised a plan to hunt down talent that was forced to leave American centers to continue researching in their disciplines. "Talent Bridge has been designed and structured through established calls such as ICREA, the Serra Húnter Plan or the Beatriz de Pinós program to guarantee success and impact on the Catalan research system," argued the Minister of Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat.

The great apes

Ashley Hammond specializes in the study of the fossil record of great ape and human evolution, with a particular focus on the form and function of the postcranial system. She earned her PhD in integrative anatomy from the University of Missouri and has worked at Stony Brook University, George Washington University, and Howard University. In 2018, she joined the American Museum of Natural History as curator of biological anthropology. She has now joined the ICP as an ICREA research fellow to lead a new research group on hominin origins. Sergio Almécija, also a paleoanthropologist, trained in biology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and earned his PhD at the ICP with research focused on the functional evolution of the hand in great apes and the origins of complex human behavior. In 2010, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and has since worked at institutions such as Stony Brook University and George Washington University.