Rate My Professor Katerina Douka

Prior roles include W2 Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany (2017-2021), Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC Advanced Grant PalaeoChron at Oxford's Research Laboratory for Archaeology (2013-2017), and Leverhulme Trust's Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (2011-2013). She leads the Douka Lab—Austria's first specialised palaeoproteomics facility—and serves as Principal Investigator for the ERC Starting Grant FINDER on fossil fingerprinting for Denisovan remains (2017-2024), the ERC Consolidator Grant RIFT-TO-RIM tracking human dispersals from the African Rift to the Pacific (2025-2030), BONETAG for bone proteomics in Neanderthal and Denisovan genotyping (2026-2029), and DENI-CESTOR on Denisovan ancestors in Sahul (2022-2025). Awards include the 15th Tübingen Prize on Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology (2013), William Golding Junior Research Fellowship at Brasenose College, Oxford (2014-2018), British School at Athens Early Career Fellowship (2013), and multiple grants exceeding €2 million from ERC, NERC, and others. Key publications are 'The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance' (2014), 'Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from western Siberia' (2014), 'Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals' (2010), and 'Age estimates for hominin fossils and the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic at Denisova Cave' (2019), amassing thousands of citations and shaping debates on human evolution. Douka is an assistant editor for PNAS, teaches courses on palaeoproteomics, scientific methods in human evolution, and archaeometry, supervises PhD and MSc students, organizes conferences, peer-reviews for Nature and Science, and engages in media outreach.