Sergey Gavrilets has been a member of the CSH External Faculty since February 2020. At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, he is Distinguished Professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Mathematics, Director of the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity (DySoC), and Associate Director for Scientific Activities at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS). He is also research associate at the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford.

Sergey is a theoretical biologist and applied mathematician who studies complex evolutionary processes. He made contributions to studies of phenotypic plasticity and genotype-environment interaction, dynamics and maintenance of genetic variation, coevolution and frequency-dependent selection, fitness landscapes, speciation and adaptive radiation, sexual conflict, evolution of homosexuality, human origins, social behavior, social and cultural evolution.

He has been involved in trans-disciplinary research at the interface of biology, social sciences, mathematics, and computational science for most of his career. Sergey has collaborated with researchers from biology, mathematics, primatology, anthropology, psychology, economics, computational science, and history, and has given talks at diverse academic departments. He has organized and run a variety of transdisciplinary working groups, workshops, and tutorials.

Sergey has numerous publications in top-notch journals, a monograph on fitness landscapes and the origin of species (Princeton University Press, 2004), and a coedited book of sexual conflict (Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press, 2014). His work has been widely covered by mass media. His recognition includes the President’s award from the American Society of Naturalists (1999), a Guggenheim fellowship (2008), and the election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017).