Rate My Professor Vera Weisbecker

Professor Vera Weisbecker is Professor in Evolutionary Biology in the College of Science and Engineering at Flinders University. She leads the Bones & Biodiversity lab, which investigates diversity patterns and adaptations in Australian vertebrates, with a particular focus on Australia's iconic marsupials such as wombats, kangaroos, and Tasmanian devils, as well as birds. Her research examines how marsupial mammals, born at tiny sizes and required to move actively to the pouch at birth for at least the last 60 million years, have evolved, and how this may influence their capacity to adapt to changing environments. She is also interested in using bony anatomy to predict the sensory capacities of birds, particularly for species that are rare or difficult to observe directly.

Weisbecker completed her undergraduate studies in Germany and earned her PhD on marsupial skeletal adaptation from the University of New South Wales in 2008. Her postdoctoral work on mammalian brain size evolution took her to Cambridge University, University College London, and Jena University in Germany. She spent eight years at the University of Queensland before joining Flinders University in February 2020. At Flinders, she has served as Chief Investigator and Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) and collaborates with the Global Ecology Lab. She teaches topics including Diversity of Life, Integrative Physiology of Animals and Plants, Vertebrate Form and Function, and Research Project in Science, with an emphasis on quantification, computer coding, and statistics. She has developed the educational game Go Extinct! Megafauna for schools and community groups.