Cody Thompson

Cody Thompson serves as the Mammal Collection Manager & Associate Research Scientist at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology (UMMZ), where he oversees the mammal collection and conducts research in mammalian diversity and evolutionary ecology.

Dr. Thompson's research focuses on the patterns and processes of mammalian diversity, with particular emphasis on the effects of hybridization on species boundaries. His work incorporates extensive fieldwork across multiple U.S. states and internationally in Belize and Mexico, combined with laboratory techniques including karyotyping, Sanger sequencing, fragment analysis, and next-generation sequencing. He has deposited thousands of specimens in natural history collections during his career.

His research interests span evolutionary ecology, genomics, conservation biology, and the utilization of natural history collections with advancing technologies. Dr. Thompson has been instrumental in developing the UMMZ CT core lab, recently achieving their 10,000th specimen scan, including a wolverine skull collected in 1948. This work contributes to the open Vertebrate (oVert) project, a collaborative effort among 18 institutions.

Dr. Thompson is actively involved in professional organizations including the American Society of Mammalogists and collaborates on initiatives like MEPA (Museums and Pathogens in the Americas), which focuses on building cross-disciplinary collaborations between biological collections and biomedical experts for pandemic preparedness.

He has supervised numerous students, bringing together current and former students at professional meetings. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and he is vocal about science policy issues, particularly advocating for continued funding of scientific research.