Faculty
Stephen Deban
Department Chair & Professor
CONTACT
Tampa campus
Office: SCA 112B
Lab: SCA 336, SCA 339
Email: sdeban@usf.edu
| Specialty Area | Recent Publications | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Physiology, Biomechanics, and Evolution | Stephen M. Deban |
EDUCATION
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1997
RESEARCH
Research in my lab is driven by our desire to understand how animals move and how
the physiological and biomechanical mechanisms that produce movement change through
evolution. Our approach is grounded in the principle that biomechanics and physiology
are overlapping and mutually enriching fields, and that in studies of musculoskeletal
function, they are necessarily linked. To understand the function of a given system
and to ultimately discover principles that unite such systems generally, we attempt
to integrate these two perspectives. We also take an evolutionary perspective in our
projects, in addition to our studies of proximal mechanisms, so that we can gain insight
into how present form and function came to be. The ultimate goal is to formulate general
principles about how complex systems evolve in the face of changing and conflicting
functional demands, which is a key pursuit of evolutionary biology.