Assistant Professor, Center for Anatomical Sciences
University of North Texas Health Science Center
Dr. Lesciotto is currently an Assistant Professor of Anatomy at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. Dr. Lesciotto’s research spans three areas: anatomy education, craniofacial growth and development, and forensic anthropology. Alongside colleagues at multiple institutions, Dr. Lesciotto has investigated the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on anatomy education and how educators handled the shift of a traditionally hands-on, three-dimensional learning environment in a dissection lab to two-dimensional online modalities. This project has expanded to explore how adaptations to learning during Covid-19 may have fundamentally altered pedagogical philosophies within anatomy and medical education. Dr. Lesciotto’s research on craniofacial growth focuses on pre- and perinatal interactions between the developing brain and skull using mice as a model organism. Through this work, she investigates hypotheses related to how encephalization may have influenced craniofacial morphology over the course of hominin evolution. Finally, Dr. Lesciotto is an active forensic anthropologist, combining casework and skeletal research to improve methods for estimating sex from skeletal remains. Her current projects focus on validating existing sex estimation methods, defining new osteological traits, and integrating morphological and metric skeletal traits using new statistical models.
