Julienne N. Rutherford

Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Laboratory for Human Biology Research, Department of Anthropology
Northwestern University
PhD, Biological Anthropology, Indiana University, 2007
julienne-rutherford@northwestern.edu
curriculum vitae

Additional biographical information

Julienne Rutherford is a postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of IPR Faculty Fellows Christopher Kuzawa and Thomas McDade of the Laboratory for Human Biology Research in the Department of Anthropology. In her dissertation, she examined the ways in which the marmoset monkey placenta responds in structure and function to increases in litter size, demonstrating that larger litters, which have higher per capita risk of mortality and reduced access to maternal resources, exhibit a significant increase in the surface area capacity of the placenta. This suggests a mechanism by which nutritionally stressed fetuses may be able to influence maternal investment. However, placental adaptations that serve to support these pregnancies to term may also contribute to postnatal growth patterns that have a negative effect on life history variables, thus placing the placenta at the intersection of developmental and evolutionary processes. Her current research expands on this work to build models linking aspects of human fetal and placental development to the programming of individuals for cardiovascular disease in adulthood.

During her postdoctoral fellowship at IPR, Rutherford will be investigating risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Filipino women, incorporating data on fetal and postnatal growth and development, adult health, socioeconomic variables, and pathogen exposures.

Rutherford worked for two years as a research associate at the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, and has conducted primatological fieldwork in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. She earned her BA in anthropology and zoology from Miami University (Ohio), and her MA and PhD in biological anthropology, with a minor in medical sciences, from Indiana University.