Anna Phillips is a PhD candidate at the City University of New York (CUNY), was born in Whiteville, NC and spent her teenage years in Mount Airy, NC. She first came to the AMNH in 2004 as undergraduate intern in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates program, for a summer research project on the systematics of the family Macrobdellidae, the North American medicinal leeches. After earning a B.S. in biology from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, she returned to the AMNH in 2006 as a PhD student at CUNY working with Mark Siddall. Her undergraduate internship project was expanded for her PhD to revise the family Hirudinidae which includes several medically relevant species, such as Hirudo medicinalis, the European medicinal leech. Members of this group are found on all continents, except Antarctica, which has taken Anna on several expeditions to parts of Africa, Asia, and Australia.

Publications