Join the Lab

We are always looking for interest in the lab! We have many opportunities for students interested in functional morphology:

• We have worked with visiting collaborators, high school students, and middle school students on projects.

• We welcome undergraduates during registration each semester. Please reach out to Dr. Hartstone-Rose (AdamHRose@ncsu.edu) if you are interested - no previous research experience is needed!

• We have many opportunities for graduate students and are seeking highly motivated candidates who are interested in digital dissection methods, muscle functional morphology, or functional morphology approaches to paleontology.

  • Funding not only covers student costs, but also the extensive resources available in the lab - hardware, software, and advanced data collection methods (including micro-CT and MRI).

Come join us and learn how to conduct investigations as part of a team, potentially earning authorship on authentic scientific research publications.

Because it takes so long to learn enough to really get much out of the experience, we only accept students with at least 3 semesters left before leaving NC State and our preference is to consider first- or second-year student applicants.

Students that first join our lab will be both trained in general lab skills (especially dissection, muscle analysis and skeletal preparation techniques) and also be integrated into established research teams led by graduate students and more experienced undergraduates in which they will learn how to contribute to some of the intellectual productivity of the lab. As students gain more experience and demonstrate their value to their research teams, they will be offered more elaborate opportunities (e.g., dissecting particularly valuable specimens and invited to collect data with us on research trips to US museums like the Smithsonian collection) and will begin to design their own projects. Most students that stay in the lab for more than a year or two eventually end up being hired as lab managers, lead project teams as the first author on publications and get invited to present at international conferences and collect data abroad. In the last several years, research students have dissected rare carnivores and primates (tigers, lemurs, baboons, a red panda) and have visited a half dozen museums in the US and abroad including collections in France, Spain, Australia, South Africa and Madagascar.

This is an intense research experience: all research in our lab is led by trainees and is conducted with the explicit goal of publication. Students are expected to contribute 5-10 hours of work per week and many end up spending much more than that – especially during intensive lab work or travel over university breaks. All students earn the opportunity to gain coauthorship on papers and almost all students stay in lab through graduation (with many continuing in gap years!), become lab leaders responsible for mentoring peers and driving research studies to completion and gain professional experience that invariably becomes a focal part of their applications for graduate and professional schools.

Madagascar, Summer 2025

Students traveled to Madagascar to present research on muscle density in primates.

The Smithsonian, Summer 2025

Students traveled to Washington D.C. to collect data on skull morphology of various mammal species, including grey foxes, raccoons, and many ungulates. 

Chicago, Winter 2024

Students traveled to Chicago to collect data on morphological variation in pumas.

The Smithsonian, Spring 2019

Students traveled to the Smithsonian museum collections in Suitland, Maryland to collect data on extant canid and felid hyoids and ossicles.

La Brea Tar Pits in California, Spring 2019

The La Brea Tar Pits museum is located in downtown Los Angeles, California, and provides an incredible collection of well preserved specimens. A team of students traveled here to collect data on the fossil hyoids and ossicles.