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CURRICULUM VITAE -- ADRIANO B. KURY
Professional address: Museu Nacional, Departamento de Invertebrados, Quinta da Boa Vista, s/nº, São Cristóvão, Rio de Janeiro, RJ - 20940-040. Telephone: +5521 2562-6984.
E-mail address: NO-SPAM@gmail.com (replace NO-SPAM with "adrianok")
Date and place of Birth: Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, 29th June 1962.
Publications (with abstracts) |
Education/Degrees >>>>>>> back to Contents
Employment/Appointments>>>>>>> back to Contents
Selected awards/honors>>>>>>> back to Contents
Selected grant support/Experience in foreign countries>>>>>>> back to Contents
Postdoctoral associates/visiting professors>>>>>>> back to Contents
Teaching>>>>>>> back to Contents
See Teaching page...
Graduate students>>>>>>> back to Contents
Selected committees/service>>>>>>> back to Contents
Selected journal reviews/editorial boards>>>>>>> back to Contents
Invited plenary presentations>>>>>>> back to Contents
Contributed paper/abstracts>>>>>>> back to Contents
See Published papers page for a complete list of all communications and abstracts in congresses...
Field experience>>>>>>> back to Contents
Argentina: 3 excursions
since 1996
Bahia: one large excursion in 2005
Espírito Santo State: many excursions since 1988
Indonesia: 3 weeks 2001
Mato Grosso State: 1 month 2000
Minas Gerais State: many excursions since 1990
Northeastern Brazil: 1 month 1999
Rio de Janeiro State: many excursions since 1987
South Africa: 3 weeks 2002, 5 weeks 2003
Southern Brazil (Paraná and Santa Catarina States): 1 month 1996, 1 month
1999
Tocantins: 3 weeks in 2007
Uruguay: one excursion 1997
Publications>>>>>>> back to Contents
See Published papers page for a complete list of articles with abstracts...
Rio
de Janeiro is a charming metropolis in the eastern Brazilian coast. It used
to be the capital of the country for centuries until they created a brand new
one in the middle of nowhere. Although São Paulo is by far the richest
state of Brazil due to industrial activities, Rio kept its glamour as the seat
of the imperial court. The oldest scientific institutions are here, including
the National Museum, founded in 1818. That is where I was born in 1962 in a
upper-middle class family. My father is a researcher specialized in Portuguese
philology and my mother a teacher of Brazilian literature. I have two younger
sisters, one who did history in Paris and the other is a marketing person.
In my youth I played guitar in a rock band and traveled to Europe working on
a cargo ship. Once back in the country I got my degree in Biology in the major
Federal University of the country, in Rio (1986). I married in 1989. Then I
got my Masters degree in the National Museum/UFRJ in the record time of 2 ½
years with the first dissertation with cladistics and biogeography in the Brazilian
arachnology. After that I went to the biggest university in Brazil – USP
in São Paulo where I got my Ph.D with an elegant thesis on the phylogeny
of the Laniatores also in the record time of 2 ½ years. My two kids,
Ian and Milena, were born in this sparkling period. By that time, I had started
publishing a steady flow of papers on the systematics of Opiliones and building
a reference collection of Opiliones with material gathered with my own resources.
My university professor career started in the UNI-RIO another federal university
where I stayed from 1993 to 1996 with a heavy teaching load. Nevertheless, with
some volunteers I started a series of expeditions to enlarge my Opiliones collection.
In 1994 I started to receive a special stipendium from Brazilian Ministry of
Science for outstanding scientific production, which is being renewed without
interruption since then. In 1996 I entered the National Museum, invited by two
young scientists who wanted to renew the staff and shake off the lethargy of
the Invertebrate Dept. In this occasion, my private collection was donated to
the museum.
Once in the Museum, I prioritized the formation of human resources. My first
grant from CNPq was used to acquire desks and chairs, cabinets and map holders
for the lab. Subsequently, I invested in air conditioning/dehumidification to
fight the creeping fungi abundant in the Museum Park which formerly caused everything
to mold and to rotten.
The arachnological collection of the National Museum was the number one in Brazil
not only by sheer numbers but also but the possession of hundreds of type-specimens
mainly from Mello-Leitão, the most important South American arachnologist
ever. My main movement was towards the enhancing of the collection: among my
efforts were 1) continuing the expeditions, 2) exchanging with colleagues in
other museums in Brazil and abroad, 3) recovering ALL the Opiliones collection
on loan since 1976(!), 4) recovering and identifying the type material, 5) negotiating
with the heirs of Helia Soares to purchase the second largest collection in
Brazil, 6) negotiating the donation of the private collection Renner Baptista
an enthusiastic colleague, 7) publishing catalogues of type material of all
arachnids. Now the Opiliones collection has almost 20,000 specimens in the database,
with many more in the backlog.
My progressive lab managed to attract a wealth of thinking brains from different
parts of Brazil and even abroad. Amazonas Chagas came from Paraná state,
Eduardo Vasconcelos from São Paulo, Abel Pérez from Cuba and Osvaldo
Villarreal from Venezuela. I supervised a large number of monographs, dissertations
and theses as a dearest advisor for my students. I always tried to push them
to enter the pantheon of the scientists known to the arachnological world by
guiding them to publish something. This way I conducted a number of students
in the steps in the preparation of a first manuscript: André Nogueira,
Rogério Rodrigues, Alessandro Giupponi, Ana Lúcia Tourinho, Amanda
Mendes, Cláudio Ferreira, Cristiano Sampaio.
Along my career I also collaborated with a number of fellow scientists in joint
papers and abstracts: Renner Baptista, Alexandre Bonaldo, Antonio Brescovit,
James Cokendolpher, Gonzalo Giribet, Glauco Machado, Emilio Maury, Ricardo Pinto-da-Rocha.
In 2001 I spent post-doctoral periods in Pretoria, South Africa and Buenos Aires,
Argentina, financed by CAPES, trying to get material to study the intercontinental
relationships of opilionid fauna.
I was elected the youngest vice-director in the history of the National Museum
for the period 1998-2001. Then in 2004 I became chairman of the Invertebrate
Department. None of this improved in anything my carreer, so it was basically
a waste of time.
My contributions to the field of systematics of the Opiliones include around
60 articles in journals and more than 30 congress abstracts. I changed the composition
of almost every family of Laniatores, created new subfamilies and families and
prepared a catalogue which was finally published in 2003 and became a most useful
tool for the systematist on the order. I wrote 20 chapters for a book called
“Harvestmen: biology of the Opiliones” authored by an international
team of experts. And I'm currently preparing a review of the subfamily Tricommatinae,
one of the subfamily Mitobatinae, something on the homology of the parts of
male genitalia of Grassatores, doing the OmniPaper + the Opilionomicon and the
list goes on and on...