Scott V. Edwards
Ph.D. 1992 UC Berkeley
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology,
Harvard University,
26 Oxford Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138
MCZ Labs Room 306
Tel: 617-384-8082
Fax: 617-495-5667
email: sedwards(at)fas.harvard.edu
CV
Scott's interest in ornithology and natural history began as a
child growing up in Riverdale, Bronx, NYC, where he undertook his first
job in environmental science working for an environmental institute called
Wave Hill. He received
his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1986. As an undergraduate, Scott
took a year off from his studies to learn what it is biologists do - he
spent 6 months volunteering at the Smithsonian's National
Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, then gained his first
field experience assisting with research on the natural history and conservation
of native birds in Hawaii and northern California. He returned to Harvard
to finish his degree, and enrolled in the PhD program in the (then) Zoology
Department (now Integrative
Biology) the University of California, Berkeley. During his first
year as a graduate student, he spent 10 months in New Guinea and Australia
first volunteering in research on ecology of birds-of-paradise and later
striking off on his own to embark on what would become his dissertation
project, a study combining of the genetics and population structure of
a group of cooperatively breeding songbirds called babblers (Pomatostomus)
found throughout Australia and New Guinea. He received his PhD in 1992.
Scott did postdoctoral research as an Alfred P. Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow
in Molecular Evolution at the University of Florida, Gainesville, working
under Wayne
Potts (now at University of Utah) and Ward
Wakeland (now at UT Southwestern Medical Center). There he switched
modes to study the evolution of genes involved with disease resistance
in wild birds. Such genes play an important role in many aspects of avian
biology, including parasite resistance, plumage color variation and mate
choice. In late 1994 he assumed an Assistant Professorship in the Department
of Zoology (now Biology)
at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was also Curator
of Genetic Resources at the Burke
Museum . During his 9 years at the U. Washington, he continued his
studies of immunogenetics and population genetics of birds, funded by
several grants from the National
Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society's Committee
for Research & Exploration , and is proud to have published five
papers with undergraduates as first authors during that time. He has served
on the Editorial Boards of Journal
of Molecular Evolution , Evolution, American Zoologist (now Integrative
and Comparative Biology), Systematic
Biology, Molecular
Biology and Evolution and Conservation
Genetics. He served on the Council of the American
Genetic Association from 2004-2006 and was AGA President in 2011. In 2012 he was elected President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, where he works to expand the Society’s mission in research and outreach, through its annual meeting and its journal, Evolution. He has served on several NSF panels and on the
National Geographic's Committee
for Research & Exploration from 2001-2009. He also received NSF funds
for an ongoing program to enhance undergraduate diversity at the annual
meetings for the Society for the Study of Evolution and is actively engaged
in increasing student diversity in the environmental and evolutionary
sciences.
He moved to Harvard University in late 2003 as a Professor of Organismic
and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Ornithology in the Museum
of Comparative Zoology , where he continues efforts to unite genomics
and natural history and involve students at all levels. His current major
interests include multilocus phylogeography and speciation in birds; genome evolution during the transition from reptiles to birds; host-pathogen interactions (such as the house finch-Mycoplasma epizootic) and the evolutionary consequences of disease outbreaks; and statistical models for inferring multilocus phylogenies and historical demography.
Edwards, S. V. 2009. Is a new and general theory of molecular systematics emerging? Evolution 63: 1-19.
Balakrishnan, C.N., Lee J. Y. and Edwards, S. V. 2010. Phylogeography and phylogenetics in the nuclear age. Pp. 65-88 In: In Search of the Causes of Evolution: From Field Observations to Mechanisms. (Eds., Peter and Rosemary Grant), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Liu, L., L. Yu , S. V. Edwards. 2010. A maximum pseudo-likelihood approach for estimating species trees under the coalescent model. BMC Evolutionary Biology 10:302. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-10-302.
Janes, D.E., C. Chapus, Y. Gondo, D.F. Clayton, S. Sinha, C.A. Blatti, C.L. Organ, M.K. Fujita, C.N. Balakrishnan, and S.V. Edwards. 2011. Reptiles and mammals have differentially retained long conserved non-coding sequences from the amniote ancestor. Genome Biology and Evolution 3:102–113.
Vo, A.-T., M. S. Bank, J. P. Shine, and S. V. Edwards. 2011. Temporal increase in organic mercury in an endangered pelagic seabird assessed via century-old museum specimens. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 108: 7466-7471.
Bonneaud, C. S. L. Balenger, A. F. Russell, J. Zhang, G. E. Hill, and S. V. Edwards. 2011. Rapid evolution of disease resistance is accompanied by functional changes in gene expression in a wild bird Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 108: 7866-7871.