Our second fabulous woman in STEM is Dr Joanne Cooper, who studies fossil birds.
Joanne is a senior curator of the avian anatomical collections at the Natural History Museum, London. She is responsible for about 35,000 specimens, as well as the preparation and curation of new skeletal and spirit specimens. She is an internationally recognised authority in avian osteology and the taxonomic identification of bird bones. Her research interests include the environmental and archaeological interpretation of fossil bird assemblages and she’s currently working on a Late Pleistocene bird assemblage from the Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt, Morocco. She is also interested in the history of the bird collections, and is currently investigating Charles Darwin’s domestic birds, Captain Fitzroy’s bird collection from the famous 1831-36 voyage of HMS Beagle and John Gould’s collection of hummingbird cases.