Rate My Professor Kristin Winchell

Kristin Winchell is Assistant Professor of Biology at New York University. She earned a BS in Biology and Mathematics from the University of San Francisco in 2006, an MA in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from Columbia University in 2011, and a PhD in Biology from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2018.

Her research focuses on evolutionary ecology, urban evolution, herpetology, and tropical ecology, with particular emphasis on the ecological and evolutionary responses of wildlife, especially Anolis lizards, to urbanization and global change. Winchell integrates field studies, phenotypic analyses, and genomics to examine adaptation in urban environments. Key publications include “Genome-wide parallelism underlies contemporary adaptation in urban lizards” (PNAS, 2023), “A Shifting Lens: Urban Evolution Brings Exaptation Into Focus” (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2023), “Moving past the challenges and misconceptions in urban adaptation research” (Ecology & Evolution, 2022), and “Selection on thermal plasticity facilitates adaptation of city lizards to urban heat islands” (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2020). She contributes to the fields of genomics and systems biology as well as evolution, ecology, and environmental biology through her work at NYU.