Mihaela Pavličev is full professor for Theoretical Evolutionary Biology at the University of Vienna, where she co-chairs the Department of Evolutionary Biology, and curates the Zoological Collection of the University.

Pavličev’s research interests revolve around the questions, what inherent systemic properties enable organisms to evolve, and what level of abstraction of organismal processes (population, individual, sub-individual, developmental stage, process type etc.) should we choose to identify these properties. In essence, these are questions about the structure and long-term evolution of the mechanisms, which map the genetic differences to the phenotypic differences among individuals, the genotype-phenotype (GP) map. Pavličev uses theoretical as well as experimental approaches in her research, specializing in her empirical work in the evolution of vertebrate reproduction.

Pavličev obtained her PhD in Ecology at the University of Vienna, followed by postdoctoral research in the field of evolutionary quantitative genetics in USA at Washington University (St. Louis, MO) and University of Oslo (Norway), and as a research professor in evolutionary medicine at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Ohio, USA. She obtained the professorship in Vienna in 2019.

Pavličev’s publications include both conceptual papers as well as experimental data analysis and cover a range of fields from theoretical evolutionary genetics, evolutionary medicine, to comparative reproductive anatomy and physiology. In particular her work in reproduction has been featured in numerous interviews, including Science, the New York Times and many more.