Melissa Manus

Dr. Melissa Manus is a human biologist and biological anthropologist whose research explores the influence of early life environments on health. Her work highlights the microbiome as a system that is environmentally sensitive, shared across generations, and predictive of health outcomes. Specifically, Dr. Manus applies ecological and evolutionary perspectives to study the social transmission of microbes as a pathway through which early life environments “get under the skin” to shape health phenotypes. This work is relevant to questions about human adaptation and evolution, as well as contemporary issues in global health.
Dr. Manus’s research experience spans South Africa, Madagascar, Ghana, Mexico, and the USA, and includes collaborations on large international global health projects. 

As a strong proponent of making microbiome science more accessible to scholars across the social and life sciences, Dr. Manus has developed “field-friendly” methods for microbiome sample collection, resources for analyzing and visualizing microbiome data, and educational materials for teaching about the microbiome.

Education

PhD, Anthropology, Northwestern University (2022)

MSc, Global Health, Duke University (2016)

BS, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Tulane University (2013)

Teaching

Introduction to Anthropology

Introduction to Biological Anthropology

Evolutionary Medicine

Research topics

Human biology and evolution

Microbiome

Bioinformatics

Global health

Evolutionary medicine

Developmental plasticity

Learn more about Dr. Manus’s research: https://mbmanus.com/