Philipp Gunz is a biological anthropologist with a primary research interest in palaeoanthropology. He studies the evolution of developmental patterns with the aim of understanding what makes us human by comparing our own species with our closest living and fossil relatives. As fossils are usually found broken into many pieces, and only partially complete, a central topic of his work is the virtual reconstruction of fossils using computed tomographic scans. In his work, he explores different aspects of ontogenetic and phylogenetic shape changes — in particular the evolution and development of the brain and the imprint it leaves in the bony braincase through an interdisciplinary approach that brings together analysis of fossil skulls, ancient genomes, brain imaging and gene expression.