Mackenzie Kirchner, Ph.D.

Curator of Integrated Biology

Dr. Mackenzie Kirchner is the Curator of Integrated Biology at the San Bernardino County Museum (SBCM). She is a biologist with a background in paleontology and geology and has been studying the skeletal morphology of living and fossil birds since 2011. Born in Indiana where she completed her undergraduate degree, she later moved to Kansas where she completed a master’s degree and worked at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History as Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology. In 2015 she moved to California, where she completed her PhD in Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked in and with many museums over the years, including digitizing collections at the UC Museum of Paleontology and at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Drawn to museums through her use of museum collections for research and her curatorial jobs, she developed a passion for the museum community. She strives to uphold the SBCM goals of bringing education and wonder to the public, and of maintaining collections for researchers and collaborators for years to come. She is an artist, gardener, and birder in her free time and lives in Crestline with her husband and two cats.