Gabrielle Russo named interim director of SBU Turkana Basin Institute
October 21, 2025
Dear Stony Brook faculty and staff,
In consultation with the Turkana Basin Institute’s International Advisory Board and other key stakeholders, I am pleased to announce that Gabrielle A. Russo, current deputy director of TBI and associate professor of anthropology, will serve as interim director of the Turkana Basin Institute, effective immediately.
Dr. Russo has been a longstanding member of the TBI research community, serving as TBI’s deputy director since September 2024. In this role, she provided support to the director in overseeing the daily functions and activities of TBI-Stony Brook, cultivating and stewarding relationships with TBI stakeholders, and organizing and executing on-campus special events that promote TBI’s impact and visibility. To support TBI’s functioning at Stony Brook, Dr. Gregory Henkes has taken on additional responsibilities as the Institute’s associate director.
Dr. Russo has been a leading force in planning the TBI @ 20: Two Decades of Daring to Dig Deeper conference taking place this week, co-organized by Henkes, associate professor of geosciences; Dr. Marine Frouin, assistant professor of geosciences and TBI affiliate faculty; and Alicia DeRosalia, TBI administrator at SBU.
For 20 years, the Turkana Basin Institute has played a critical role in facilitating field research in the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya. Founded by Richard Leakey in partnership with Stony Brook University in 2005, TBI provides a sophisticated network of support for the research of scientists and students across Stony Brook and from around the world at two field campuses: TBI-Turkwel and TBI-Ileret. Each campus comprises 15 to 20 major buildings that provide accommodation, dining services, and research facilities for as many as 60 scientists and students, and a permanent staff of about 40. Work at the field campuses is supported by an administrative office in Nairobi, TBI’s Air Turkana, and the International Academic Headquarters at SBU.
Dr. Russo is a biological anthropologist who studies the functional and evolutionary anatomy of apes and humans. Much of her work focuses on major transformations to the locomotor skeleton that occurred during the course of ape and human evolution, including the loss of a tail, the adoption of more upright trunk postures, and adaptations to walking and running on two legs. Dr. Russo conducts paleontological fieldwork at Miocene (~23-5 million years ago) sites in the Turkana Basin known for yielding ape fossils. She helped lead a team on the recovery, analysis, and description of a Middle Miocene ape partial skeleton published last year in the Journal of Human Evolution. Ultimately her research program aimsto improve our understanding of the lifestyles and relationships of extinct apes.
The TBI International Advisory Board and I look forward to working with Dr. Russo in this interim capacity. In the coming weeks and months, we will begin an international search for a permanent director.
Sincerely,
Carl W. Lejuez
Executive Vice President and Provost