The School of Biological Sciences supports ongoing research in a variety of areas. Explore the various research areas below. These research areas also correspond to the available areas of specialization for our graduate programs.
We live in a time of unprecedented and accelerating environmental transformation, with ecological changes occurring across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Human activities—such as habitat destruction, the introduction of invasive species and diseases, and climate change— are altering ecosystems at an alarming rate, with negative consequences for biodiversity and ultimately humanity. Our faculty working to understand the Ecology of a Changing Planet focus their efforts on four knowledge gaps: What is changing; where and how fast is it happening; can these changes be forecasted; and what are the signs of drastic or catastrophic change?
Understanding the rules that govern how organisms interact with each other and with their environment, and how those interactions shape the living world is critical to predict biological systems. The study of behavior provides unique insights into the fields of evolution, ecology, physiology, perception, cognition, and neurosciences. Faculty working to understand Behavior from Molecules to Ecosystems integrate field and laboratory approaches to address wide-ranging questions about the behavioral rules that govern mechanisms and consequences across diverse behavioral phenotypes, and across a range of unicellular and multicellular organisms.
The health of biological systems—humans, animals, plants, and microorganisms—is strongly interconnected to their basic biology and complex and dynamic environments. Research efforts in One Health initiatives recognize the connections between human health, wildlife and domestic animal health, and ecosystem health. Our faculty working to understand the Biological Foundations of One Health focus on biological phenomena that are foundational to biological health by addressing outstanding questions that include: How do pathogens spread within and jump between species; how do interactions among microbes and hosts affect disease outcomes; and how can improved diagnostic and analytic approaches improve our understanding of preventing, predicting, and mitigating emerging infectious diseases?
A biosphere that can support human and ecosystem health depends on biological diversity at all levels, from molecules to organisms and from populations to biomes. Studying how fundamental evolutionary processes within and among populations give rise to millions of different species and to the myriad complexity of their interactions are crucial to understanding the origin and maintenance of the great diversity of life on Earth. Our faculty working to understand the Mechanisms of Biodiversity engage in research across four areas: How does biodiversity change and why; what is the physiological basis for the change; what are the molecular processes related to change; what are the impacts of these changes across space, time and levels of biological organization?
