Cara Ocobock

Cara Ocobock, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of anthropology and the director of the Human Energetics Laboratory at Notre Dame. Her research program integrates human biology and anthropology, with a focus on the interaction between anatomy, physiology, evolution, and the environment. She explores the physiological and behavioral mechanisms necessary to cope with and adapt to extreme climate and physical activity. Ocobock works in northern Finland, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Lapland and University of Oulu. This project focuses on reindeer herders, a highly active cold climate population. Her research assesses their lifeways, life history patterns, cold climate adaptations, addresses potential health disparities, and examines the impact of climate change on health and well-being. This work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the American-Scandinavian Foundation. One aspect of this work focuses on brown adipose tissue, a type of fat that burns only to keep an individual warm when cold and leads to a known increase in metabolic rate – the number of calories you burn each day. Brown fat has important implications for not only understanding cold adaptations now and throughout human evolution but also for metabolic health and the treatment of obesity.

Ocobock is also working on a project with collaborators at the University of Missouri and the University of North Texas to assess the physiological significance of anatomical indicators of cold adaptations. This work will help elucidate the potential advantages past cold climate populations such as Neanderthals may have had.

Ocobock is also a former powerlifter and loves to bring anthropology to sport. She has worked with hockey players at the collegiate and semi-professional levels as well as collegiate track and field athletes. She is currently collaborating with Notre Dame Athletics on a number of projects.

Finally, Ocobock is exploring feminist human evolution from a physiological perspective. She hopes to better elucidate the ways in which the female of our species may have shaped our evolutionary trajectory. Ocobock’s research is at the intersection of metabolic physiology, evolution, culture, and behavior. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Human Biology, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Anthropologist, Science Advances, Anthropology News, and was recently the cover story of Scientific American