On the Path to Research, Teach, and Curate
Lauren Bartel ’26 in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Courtesy of Harvard Museums of Science & Culture
The FAS Current featured Lauren Bartel, IB Concentrator in Scott Edwards Lab, who joined the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture student board as a first-year and stayed her full four years helping to increase public understanding and appreciation for the natural world, science, and human cultures.
Lauren's work in the Edwards Lab led to a senior thesis that provided one of the first direct measurements of large-scale DNA mutations in any wild vertebrate. The work focused on families of Florida scrub-jays, revealing how genetic change emerges across generations, advancing evolutionary theory and conservation biology.