Professor of Anthropology Sarah Hlubik has received a prestigious research fellowship from the Leakey Foundation for her project, "Understanding fire incidence in the Early Pleistocene of Koobi Fora, northern Kenya." Hlubik will use her stipend to investigate how early fire ecology shaped human evolution by examining whether patterns of fire in the archaeological landscape at Koobi Fora, Kenya indicate intentional fire use by early Homo sp. around 1.5 million years ago.
The Leakey Foundation, founded in 1968, is a donor-supported nonprofit organization "on a quest to answer profound questions" about what it means to be human. The Foundation's mission is to uncover the story of human evolution and share this knowledge with the world. Research grants from the Leakey Foundation are given to only about 50 projects worldwide each year, and to be selected for this highly competitive award is an exceptional achievement.
