Dr. Gil Rosenthal, professor of biology at Texas A&M University, has been named associate dean for international programs in the Texas A&M College of Science, announced Dean Dr. Valen E. Johnson.
Rosenthal joined the Texas A&M Department of Biology in 2006 after earning his Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, completing postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego and serving a four-year stint as an assistant professor at Boston University from 2002 to 2006. A widely respected expert in evolutionary biology and animal behavior, he has served since fall 2018 as chair of the interdisciplinary doctoral program in ecology and evolutionary biology — a program he helped to establish when he first arrived at Texas A&M. He is also a member of the Faculties of Marine Biology, Neuroscience and Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. In 2019, he was honored as one of 10 inaugural Enhancing Development and Generating Excellence in Scholarship (EDGES) Fellows across the Texas A&M campus.
As associate dean for international programs, Rosenthal will work to strengthen and expand the international experiences of undergraduate students and faculty members throughout the college, coordinating as appropriate across the university and affiliated units. He assumes the position previously held since July 2013 by Texas A&M mathematician Dr. Paulo Lima-Filho, currently serving as assistant provost for undergraduate studies with oversight for the Texas A&M Math Learning Center.
Rosenthal’s research program and his intellectual focus involve uncovering mechanisms that constitute mate choice and the central role it plays in determining genetic exchange between species. His model system is a naturally hybridizing complex of Mexican swordtail fish that allows him to combine experimental analyses of behavior with evolutionary-genetic studies of both wild and artificial populations. The core expertise in his lab is in manipulative studies of visual and olfactory communication, which provides a detailed picture of how female mating preferences should generate selection on male traits and how these preferences are affected by the physical environment and by hybridization itself. To date, Rosenthal has published more than 110 journal articles with an h-index of 40 and one major book, Mate Choice: The Evolution of Sexual Decision Making from Microbes to Humans (Princeton University Press, 2017) that has received very favorable reviews in Science, Current Biology and the Quarterly Review of Biology.
Beyond running his own robust research program at Texas A&M, Rosenthal has made major contributions to his field at the local, national and international levels, establishing a field station in 2005 in central Mexico, the Centro de lnvestigaciones Cientificas de las Huastecas “Aguazarca,” also known as CICHAZ. Co-directed with Dr. Rhonda Struminger in the Texas A&M Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology with the goal of bringing science and service together, CICHAZ has attracted funding from Mexican funding agencies, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Stanford University. Rosenthal has organized two international conferences at this field station in 2014 and 2015, along with five other national or international conferences and workshops. He also is active in the Animal Behavior Society, where he currently serves as treasurer after previously serving as chair for public affairs. A former associate editor of two journals, Evolution and Behavioral Ecology, Rosenthal also is a longtime member of the College of Science Diversity Committee.
To learn more about Rosenthal and his teaching, research and service, visit https://www.bio.tamu.edu/faculty-page-gil-rosenthal/.
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Contact: Shana K. Hutchins, (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@science.tamu.edu or Dr. Gil Rosenthal, (979) 845-3614 or grosenthal@bio.tamu.edu
