Zeresenay Alemseged

Zeresenay Alemseged is a Professor and Principal Investigator at the University of Chicago, holding the Donald N. Pritzker Professorship in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy. He also serves as a Research Associate & Academy Fellow in Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences.

His research focuses on human evolution through the discovery and interpretation of hominin fossils and their environmental contexts. Key research areas include:

• Description of new hominin and non-human primates
• Growth and development in early hominins
• Application of advanced imaging techniques like CT analysis
• Analysis of environmental and ecological factors affecting evolutionary processes

Professor Alemseged initiated the Dikika Research Project in 1999, conducting multidisciplinary field research on sediments spanning from over 3.8 million years ago to less than 500,000 years ago. His work combines intensive fieldwork in East Africa with cutting-edge virtual paleoanthropology techniques, including 3D scanning, synchrotron, and mini-CT scanning to study fossil specimens without physical handling.

His scientific honors include the prestigious Donald N. Pritzker Professorship. Recent activities include his appointment as Chair of the Sub-Saharan Africa Faculty Working Group at the University of Chicago in July 2025 and participation in the 27th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Africanist Archaeologists in Portugal in August 2025.

Professor Alemseged's laboratory has produced over 100 publications with more than 2,000 citations. His team conducts fieldwork at sites including Dikika and Mille-Longya in East Africa, with research spanning the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens.