Sharmi Sen

Background

About Sharmi Sen

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University where I am leading projects examining nutritional phenotypes and overall health of primates at an inter and intra-species scale. Broadly, I am interested in understanding how individual variation in social behavior and social determinants of health can influence life-history evolution. I incorporate several methods in my ongoing work ranging from fieldwork, behavioral analysis, endocrinology, genetics, and metagenomics.Prior to this, I held a postdoctoral position at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2023-2025) working on projects examining the social microbiome of the little known kinda baboons in Zambia. I completed my PhD in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan in 2023. My doctoral dissertation investigated the causes and consequences of variation in male development and reproductive strategies in wild geladas, a close relative to baboons.