Patricia Brennan | |
---|---|
Alma mater | Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (BSc) Cornell University (PhD) |
Awards | National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2021) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | |
Doctoral advisor | Stephen Emlen Paul Sherman |
Other academic advisors | Richard Prum Tim Birkhead |
Website | http://www.pattybrennan.com/ |
Patricia "Patty" Brennan is a Colombian and American evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist. She is a professor of biology at Mount Holyoke College,[1] and her research focuses on sexual selection, sexual conflict, and genital coevolution in vertebrates.[2]
Brennan's work on the genital morphology of waterfowl, particularly her research on duck penises and her discovery of variations in duck vaginas,[2] has received extensive press coverage in publications like The New York Times,[3][4] The Guardian,[5] National Geographic,[6] and Scientific American.[7] Her work on snake and dolphin clitorises has been featured in publications such as The Atlantic,[8] Smithsonian Magazine,[9] New Scientist,[10] and The Washington Post.[11] She is an advocate for basic science,[12][13] as well as for further research into vertebrate vaginas.[14][15][16]
Brennan was born in Bogotá, Colombia. She completed her Bachelor of Science in marine biology at the Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano in 1994.[2] In 2005, she received her Doctor of Philosophy in Neurobiology and Behavior from Cornell University, where she studied the reproductive biology of the great tinamou at the La Selva Biological Station.[17] While conducting field research, she observed a corkscrew-shaped tinamou penis[2] and wrote a post-doctoral project on bird genitalia after identifying a lack of research on the subject.[18]
From 2005 to 2008, Brennan held a joint postdoctoral appointment at the University of Sheffield and Yale University, where she continued her research on the great tinamou[19] and begin studying duck genitalia with Richard Prum and Tim Birkhead.[2] After she received funding from the National Science Foundation to study duck penises, she was attacked by right-wing media for what was characterized as "wasteful" government spending.[20] In response, she defended her work and the broader importance of basic research in the online magazine Slate[12] and in the journal BioScience,[13] and she began campaigning to support other scientists who dealt with similar attacks.[21] She worked at Yale until 2009, after which she joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a research professor.[22] Brennan joined the biological sciences faculty at Mount Holyoke College in 2015.[23] In 2021, she received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to study reproductive structures in snakes.[24] In 2022, Brennan was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her contributions to biological sciences.[25]