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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.

Contents:

Education/Degrees

Employment/Appointments

Selected awards/honors

Selected grant support

Postdoctoral associates/visiting professors

Teaching

Graduate students

Selected committees/service

Selected reviews

Invited presentations

Contributed paper/abstracts

Field experience

 

Publications (with abstracts)

Life memorial

 


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...


Life memorial

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...