Ed Stanley, PhD, ’09 MS

Dr. Stanley is widely considered the world’s foremost expert in the use of micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanning to study the evolution of snakes, lizards and amphibians. Several former Villanova students have gone through his lab, including PhD candidates who were part of Dr. Bauer’s and Dr. Jackman’s master’s programs. The path to Dr. Stanley’s career started at Villanova with those two professors, with whom he completed a master’s thesis on the DNA-based evolutionary relationships of a group of African lizards. That paved the way for his PhD work using micro-CT scanning to study evolutionary biology. “My background is in lizards, and it’s the path that led me to the methodology that I’m most known for now,” he says. “It goes to show, it’s not necessarily the project you work on at Villanova that makes your career, rather the tool kit you gain at Villanova.”