Kyle R Luckenbill

Kyle serves as a Collection Manager in the Ichthyology Department at the Academy, helping to care for the 1.6 million specimens in the collection. Part of caring for the collection includes increasing the accessibility of the specimens to researchers and the community, which often requires various forms of imaging. As a result, Kyle has captured thousands of photographs and x-rays of specimens from the Academy’s collections and captures MicroCT scans to help view internal structures in three dimensions. In addition to his work with fishes, Kyle also produces illustrations and 3-D surface scans for the Vertebrate Paleontology Department, contributes to projects for the Exhibits Department, participates in museum education programs and serves as the Production Editor for Scientific Publications, where he is responsible for managing figure submissions and creating layouts for manuscripts. Kyle’s illustrations and images have appeared in journals such as The Proceeding of the Academy of Natural Sciences, The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Ichthyology and Herpetology (formerly Copeia) and Nature. Kyle’s current research centers around using virtual dissections of models created from CT scans to explore the skeletal morphology of various groups of catfishes to aid in describing new species.