Fred W. Allendorf

Allendorf's research focuses on the application of population and evolutionary genetics to conservation. He has also held academic positions in New Zealand and Australia. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and an NSF NATO Fellow at Nottingham University in England. He is a past President of the American Genetic Association and served as director of the Population Biology Program of the National Science Foundation. He received the Molecular Ecology Prize for lifetime achievements in the fields of molecular ecology and conservation genetics in 2015, and the American Fisheries Society’s Award of Excellence in recognition of outstanding contributions to fisheries science and aquatic biology in 2011. Much of his work in evolutionary genetics has been devoted to understanding the genetics of salmonid fishes following a whole genome duplication event (tetraploidy). His 200+ articles have been cited more than 40,000 times (h-index = 93). He and the over 50 graduate students and postdocs he trained helped establish the field of Conservation Genetics. Allendorf’s book “Conservation and the Genomics of Populations” (2022), co-authored with Chris Funk, Sally Aitken, Margaret Byrne, and Gordon Luikart, provides an understanding of how genetics can be used to conserve species. He has written several papers that strive to unite the scientific fields of evolution and ecology with the spiritual practice of Zen.