CU Boulder scholars William Taylor and Fernando Villanea have been named 2025 National Science Foundation CAREER award winners

Two University of Colorado Boulder anthropologists have been named 2025 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award winners by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support their research of animal domestication and genomic variation.

William Taylor, a CU Boulder assistant professor of anthropology and CU Museum of Natural History curator of archaeology, has been awarded a $419,696 grant for his research project “Understanding Animal Domestication and Human-Environmental Relationships.” Fernando Villanea, an assistant professor of anthropology, has been awarded a $579,010 grant to study “Archaic Hominin Genomic Variation in Modern Human Populations.”

William Taylor, a CU Boulder assistant professor of anthropology and CU Museum of Natural History curator of archaeology, has been awarded a $419,696 NSF CAREER grant for his research project “Understanding Animal Domestication and Human-Environmental Relationships.” 

The NSF CAREER Program offers the foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty “who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization,” according to the NSF. “Activities pursued by early-career faculty should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.”

“Funding from this grant means my research team’s salaries will be supported for the next five years, including hiring a new post-doctoral scholar, to explore the effects of Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry in living people,” Villanea says. “A portion of the grant will also fund functional genetic experiments in collaboration with scientists at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine.”

Taylor notes that this award “is a tremendous honor and a huge step forward in our scientific investigation of the past. Ancient Mongolia was deeply intertwined with so many parts of the story of animal domestication, from dogs to horses, reindeer, and beyond. It’s exciting we will be able to start exploring that with our interdisciplinary team at CU over the years ahead.”

Doing community archaeology

Taylor’s research aims to understand animal domestication and human-environmental relationships on northeast Asian prehistory through archaeology.

His NSF CAREER project will investigate rare, well-preserved archaeological and biological assemblages recovered from archaeological field research in western Mongolia—including new finds from high mountain snow and ice features and excavation of stratified dry caves—spanning the last four millennia and beyond.

The research will be paired with a multifaceted program of museum education and outreach, building on Taylor’s past findings, providing infrastructure for the protection of cultural resources and the cultivation of international scientific cooperation while supporting early-career scientists and expanding public education in Mongolia and the United States.

The NSF CAREER support will aid Taylor and his Mongolian partners, including the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and National Museum of Mongolia, to analyze ancient animal remains, artifacts and ecofacts with cutting-edge techniques from archaeozoology, biomolecular sciences and paleoenvironmental data from the Mongolian Altai. The research team will seek to establish data-driven models for the introduction and dispersal of domestic livestock to northeast Asia; the timing and role of Mongolian cultures in the innovation of large animal transport, including the chariot, the saddle/stirrup and reindeer riding; and the relationship of key social developments to ancient environments in the eastern Steppe.

 

Fernando Villanea, an assistant professor of anthropology, has been awarded a $579,010 NSF CAREER grant to study “Archaic Hominin Genomic Variation in Modern Human Populations.”

“Leveraging partnerships and expertise from scientists and institutions at home and abroad, this award will produce key scientific research on animal domestication and the human story,” Taylor noted, adding that the CAREER award will help “to build important educational tools and capacity for a future generation of scientists and scholars, along with strong international partnerships and scientific cooperations between Mongolia and the United States.”

Archaic genetics, modern applications

Villanea’s NSF CAREER research begins with the concept that “living people carry archaic genetic material inherited from other hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. This genetic inheritance can affect fitness and health, and its persistence and effects cannot be fully understood unless studies consider each group’s unique population history and the evolutionary processes that shaped them,” he explained.

The goal of Villanea’s study is to assess the presence and evaluate the impact of archaic hominin ancestry in groups with a complex population history by applying sophisticated computational genetic techniques to existing information. Villanea and his research colleagues aim to develop educational tools, provide training opportunities for students at different educational levels and build capacity in a new generation of scientists.

This research advances knowledge of archaic ancestry in groups with complex admixture. To separate the archaic ancestry contributions from those derived from modern groups, this study analyzes the genomes of individuals that predate well-documented historic processes as well as those from modern peoples. To improve admixture models, the study creates computational tools that benefit from artificial intelligence techniques. The study examines the relationship between archaic gene variants and phenotypic traits.

Villanea’s research will focus on the Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry distribution in Indigenous American and descendant Latin American genomes, promoting understanding of the forces of evolution as they acted in Indigenous American and descendant Latin American genomes. A goal is that the knowledge gained will empower underrepresented students to access higher education in medical and STEM fields.

“Computational and statistical competency is a lower cost of entry to STEM and medical sciences than hands-on experience in laboratory techniques, and I believe that this trend is democratizing access to genomics research across all institutions,” Villanea noted. “The trend towards free access to scientific resources is exemplified by the public availability of modern and ancient genomes, and the acceptance of preprint services to remove paywalls to exciting new results and methodologies.

“For this reason, I advocate for the inclusion of computational competency in the curriculum for all students, and see an opportunity for online resources to provide an early form of access to evolutionary theory for pre-college level students that can both grow their interest in biology and improve their chances at academic development by equipping them with high-level theory they can be self-taught supplementing their school curriculum.”

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