Cameron Pittman

Museum Specialist, Department of Mammalogy

Smiling portrait of Cameron Pittman, standing with arms crossed inside the atrium of the Museum's Richard Gilder Center.
Email:
[email protected]
Phone:
212-769-5079

Education

  • M.S. in Museum and Field Studies with a concentration on Collection Management from the University of Colorado Boulder
  • B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife with a concentration on Wildlife Science from The University of Georgia

Research Interests

Cameron Pittman is interested in the long-term preservation and accessibility of natural history collections, combining collections management, digitization methodology, and 3D imaging to address questions of specimen stewardship and data longevity. 

As a museum professional, the principal focus of his work is improving how museums capture, structure, and share collection data, particularly through CT and structured-light 3D scanning of vertebrate specimens. Cameron has lived all over the country and found a love for natural history museums at a young age. 

He received a B.S. in Wildlife Science at the University of Georgia, where he discovered museum collections at the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Subsequently, Cameron attended the Museum and Field Studies program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he worked in the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History’s Vertebrate and Invertebrate Collections and was awarded his master’s of science in 2023. 

His thesis focused on the use of micro-CT scanning to conduct morphological comparisons between shrew species in Colorado. He has applied these tools to produce publicly accessible 3D models and imaging datasets for research reuse. This work is grounded in the “Extended Species” concept (Lendemer et. Al 2019), where digitization can extend the research value of specimens without compromising their physical integrity, and that well-structured digital records are as essential to a collection's long-term utility as the specimens themselves. His broader collections work spans mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, with a particular focus on mammals here at the American Museum of Natural History.

Publications

Mullins, J.L., A.W. Paraskevopoulos, C. Pittman, S.J. Burrows, A.L. Carper, J. Resasco. (2024) New Records of Gynandromorphism in Heriades and Dianthidium and Images of the First Reported Dianthidium Gynandromorph (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae). J. of the Kansas Entomological Society, 96(2):30-38 (2024). https://doi.org/10.2317/0022-8567-96.2.30

Kunkel D.M., B.L Long-Fox, C. Pittman, J. Portmann, M. Sheik, J.M. Bates, A. Bentley, D.L. Contreras, E.R. Ellwood, M.W. Lomas, A.K. Monfils, W.E. Moser, G. Nelson, S. Poo, B. Thiers, G.J. Watkins-Colwell, M.S. Webster, B.M. Zimkus, J.L. Pandey. (2026) Integrating biological and environmental data to solve key scientific and societal challenges, BioScience, Volume 76, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 13–20, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf150