Rate My Professor Terence Capellini

Terence D. Capellini serves as Chair and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology in Harvard University's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. He directs the Developmental and Evolutionary Genetics Lab, located in the Peabody Museum, and holds an appointment as Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Capellini earned his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1995, focusing on physics and human evolution. He obtained a Master's degree in Biological Anthropology from Kent State University in 1998 and pursued his MPhil and PhD through the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology at the City University of New York, researching factors in limb and girdle skeleton patterning. From 2008 to 2013, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University Medical School in David Kingsley's laboratory, exploring developmental genetic and evolutionary mechanisms of joint formation, such as the knee and hip, in humans. He joined Harvard in 2013, advancing to his current leadership roles.

Capellini's research identifies DNA base-pair changes driving human and non-human primate biological adaptations, elucidating developmental and genetic mechanisms of trait formation, inheritance, and disease susceptibility. Key focuses include genetic alterations shaping the unique human post-cranial skeleton, the genetic and developmental architecture of primate joint diversity, Neanderthal interbreeding contributions to human adaptations, and evolutionary impacts on osteoarthritis risk. His lab integrates developmental biology, genetics, genomics, comparative biology, and primate/human evolution. Supported by NIH R01 grants from NIAMS on human knee joint/pelvis architecture (2022-2027) and musculoskeletal development for disease variants (2025-2030), plus NSF funding on introgressed variants, the work bridges paleoanthropology, skeletal biology, functional genomics, and medicine. Prominent publications encompass 'The evolution of hominin bipedalism in two steps' (Nature, 2025), 'Functional genomics of human skeletal development and the patterning of height heritability' (Cell, 2025), 'Evolutionary Selection and Constraint on Human Knee Chondrocyte Regulation Impacts Osteoarthritis Risk' (Cell, 2020), and 'The developmental impacts of natural selection on human pelvis morphology' (Science Advances, 2022). His findings have garnered attention in Nature, the New York Times, and Harvard Gazette, with public lectures such as 'When Evolution Hurts' at the Peabody Museum.