Steven A. Frank

Dr. Steven A. Frank is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. He also serves as an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Frank develops mathematical, computational, and conceptual models to study complex phenotypes, and is known for shifting paradigms in in three diverse areas of evolutionary biology: genome evolution, social evolution, and cancer evolution. Early in his career, Frank focused on how evolutionary and genetic processes shape reproductive and behavioral traits, contributing critical theories to the field of genome evolution. His meiotic drive theory of speciation and his theory of nuclear-mitochondrial conflict in plant male sterility established the modern framework for genome evolution and plant breeding system evolution. In the field of social evolution, Frank’s conceptual synthesis and analytical techniques provided the first general and widely used way to make testable quantitative hypotheses about social aspects of sex allocation, dispersal, parasite virulence, and microbial life history. In recent years, Frank has become focused on the cancer evolution, and has changed the evolutionary study of cancer from a few vague ideas into a conceptual foundation for future work. His current research interests include population genetics, the history of evolutionary theory, evolutionary aspects of adaptation and development, and the biology of figs. Frank’s research on these topics continues to focus on complex phenotypes as he did earlier in his career, but now with particular emphasis on how the quantitative dynamics of genetic, biochemical, and cellular mechanisms determine those phenotypes, and how evolutionary processes in turn shape the mechanisms and dynamics that give rise to phenotypes. Frank has published several books, including Foundations of Social Evolution (Princeton University Press), Immunology and Evolution of Infectious Disease (Princeton University Press), and Dynamics of Cancer (Princeton University Press). Frank has been awarded the American Society of Naturalist’s Young Investigator Award, a Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize, a NIH FIRST Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences Membership. His diverse publications appear in journals such as Current Biology, Nature, and Journal of Evolutionary Biology.