Biography
Meave Leakey is Research Professor in Stony Brook University’s Department of Anthropology. She is
also director of field research at the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya, a unique
nonprofit initiative co-founded by the Leakey family and Stony Brook to drive research
at one of the best locations on Earth for studying the origins of humankind. She was
awarded the National Geographic's 2016 Hubbard Medal, its highest honor, in recognition
of her groundbreaking anthropological finds and continued dedication and inspiration
to her field of research. On a National Geographic-sponsored expedition in 1999, her
team uncovered a 3.5-million-year-old skull and partial jaw belonging to a new genus
and species of early hominin that Leakey and her colleagues named
Kenyanthropus platyops. She is also research affiliate at the National Museums of Kenya, a foreign associate
of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and an African Academy of Sciences fellow.