Dr. Pincelli M. Hull is an Associate Professor in the Yale University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and an Associate Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum. Leveraging her broad training in ecology, oceanography, paleontology, evolutionary biology, geochemistry, and Earth system science, Dr. Hull seeks to understand how the tangled web of life has continuously shaped, and been shaped by, the Earth system. The ultimate goal of her research is to answer fundamental questions regarding the dynamics, resilience, collapse, reassembly, and function of living systems in order to better predict how ecosystems will respond to intensifying modification by humanity. Her group harnesses the power of the fossil record to understand the biosphere with varied techniques, including natural history observations and field science, biological and chemical lab work, bioinformatics, morphometrics, modeling, and machine learning. Through her collaboration with a variety of interdisciplinary teams, Dr. Hull has advanced our understanding of the causes and consequences of mass extinctions, abrupt global warming events, and biotic and environmental dynamics across time scales and in different background climate states. Visit the Hull Lab website for more information on their work.

Planned Polymaths Work: Dr. Hull will leverage the power of fossils to understand the mechanisms underpinning the remarkable adaptability and resilience of life on a changing planet. She seeks to explore questions related to absolute limits on the adaptability of life to warming climates and to understand the mechanisms, such as dormancy, that can increase resilience of species and ecosystems to environmental extremes.