Hi reddit! We are scientists at Harvard who study evolution from all different angles. Evolution is like a “grand unified theory” for biology, which helps us understand so many aspects of life on earth. Many of the major ideas about evolution by natural selection were first described by Charles Darwin, who was born on this very day in 1809. Happy birthday Darwin!
We use evolution to understand things as diverse as how infections can become resistant to drug treatment and how complex, cooperative societies can arise in so many different living things. Some of us do field work, some do experiments, and some do lots of data analysis. Many of us work at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, where we study the fundamental mathematical principles of evolution
Our attendees today and their areas of expertise include:
Dr. Martin Nowak - Prof of Math and Bio, evolutionary theory, evolution of cooperation, cancer, viruses, evolutionary game theory, origin of life, eusociality, evolution of language,
Dr. Alison Hill - infectious disease, HIV, drug resistance
Dr. Kamran Kaveh - cancer, evolutionary theory, evolution of multi-cellularity
Charleston Noble - graduate student, evolution of engineered genetic elements (“gene drives”), infectious disease, CRISPR
Sam Sinai - graduate student, origin of life, evolution of complexity, genotype-phenotype predictions
Dr. Erez Yoeli - evolutionary game theory, evolution of altruism, evolution of human behavior and preferences
Dr. Hsiao-Han Chang - population genetics, malaria, drug-resistant bacteria
Dr. Deborah Marks - Prof of Systems Biology, computational biology, protein structure and evolution, genotype-phenotype predictions
Dr. Joscha Bach - cognition, artificial intelligence
Phil Grayson - graduate student, evolutionary genomics, developmental genetics, flightless birds
Dr. Brian Arnold - population genetics, bacterial evolution, plant evolution
Jeff Gerold - graduate student, cancer, viruses, immunology, bioinformatics
Carl Veller - graduate student, evolutionary game theory, evolution of cooperation, evolution of flowering intervals in plants
We will be back at 3 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!
submitted by /u/Darwin_Day to /r/science
[link] [comments]