Biology – The natural science that studies life. Areas of focus include structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy.
Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and differentiation of stem cells in the adult organism.
Nicole King is an American biologist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley in molecular and cell biology and integrative biology. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) since 2013.
The Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen was located in Tübingen, Germany; it was founded as Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in 1954 as an offshoot of the Tübingen-based Max Planck Institute for Biology. From 1984 to 2021, it was named Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. The topics of scientific research conducted at the institute cover a very wide range -- from biochemistry, cell and developmental biology to evolutionary and ecological genetics, functional genomics and bioinformatics -- in order to address fundamental questions in microbial, plant and animal biology, including the interaction between different organisms.
Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) is the study of developmental programs and patterns from an evolutionary perspective. It seeks to understand the various influences shaping the form and nature of life on the planet. Evo-devo arose as a separate branch of science rather recently. An early sign of this occurred in 1999.
Dame Caroline Dean is a British plant scientist working at the John Innes Centre. She is focused on understanding the molecular controls used by plants to seasonally judge when to flower. She is specifically interested in vernalisation — the acceleration of flowering in plants by exposure to periods of prolonged cold. She has also been on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2018.
Naomi E. Pierce is an American entomologist and evolutionary biologist who studies plant-herbivore coevolution and is a world authority on butterflies.
Leah Krubitzer is an American neuroscientist, Professor of Psychology at University of California, Davis, and head of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobiology. Her research interests center on how complex brains in mammals evolve from simpler forms. To do this, she focuses on anatomical connections and electrophysiological characteristics of neurons in the neocortex. Using comparative studies, she determines which features of the neocortex are shared by all mammals and how new features of the neocortex have evolved. This allows her to reconstruct evolutionary phylogenies of the neocortex together with their relationship to functional changes. Thus, her work aims to explain the diversity in mammalian behavioral and perceptual abilities by investigating how evolutionarily old developmental mechanisms constrain evolutionary change while also providing the variation needed for the evolution of the diversity of brains found in mammals.
Detlef Weigel is a German American scientist working at the interface of developmental and evolutionary biology.
Brian Keith Hall is the George S. Campbell Professor of Biology and University Research Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hall has researched and extensively written on bone and cartilage formation in developing vertebrate embryos. He is an active participant in the evolutionary developmental biology (EVO-DEVO) debate on the nature and mechanisms of animal body plan formation. Hall has proposed that the neural crest tissue of vertebrates may be viewed as a fourth embryonic germ layer. As such, the neural crest - in Hall's view - plays a role equivalent to that of the endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm of bilaterian development and is a definitive feature of vertebrates. As such, vertebrates are the only quadroblastic, rather than triploblastic bilaterian animals. In vertebrates the neural crest serves to integrate the somatic division and visceral division together via a wide range novel vertebrate tissues.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to evolution:
The Ernst Schering Prize is awarded annually by the Ernst Schering Foundation for especially outstanding basic research in the fields of medicine, biology or chemistry anywhere in the world. Established in 1991 by the Ernst Schering Research Foundation, and named after the German apothecary and industrialist, Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering, who founded the Schering Corporation, the prize is now worth €50,000.
Dianne Newman is a molecular microbiologist, a professor in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering and the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at California Institute of Technology. Her research interests include bioenergetics and cell biology of metabolically diverse, genetically-tractable bacteria. Her work deals with electron-transfer reactions that are part of the metabolism of microorganisms.
Cassandra Extavour is a Canadian geneticist, researcher of organismic and evolutionary biology, professor of molecular and cell biology at Harvard University, and a classical singer. Her research has focused on evolutionary and developmental genetics. She is known for demonstrating that germ cells engage in cell to cell competition before becoming a gamete, which indicates that natural selection can affect and change genetic material before adult sex reproduction takes place. She was also the Director of EDEN, a National Science Foundation-funded research collaborative that encouraged scientists working on organisms other than the standard lab model organisms to share protocols and techniques.
Tanja Stadler is a mathematician and professor of computational evolution at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. She’s the current president of the Swiss Scientific Advisory Panel COVID-19 and Vize-Chair of the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zürich.
Tanya M. Smith is a human evolutionary biologist, and Professor at the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University.
Vivian Irish is an American evolutionary biologist. She is currently Chair & Eaton Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. Her research focuses on floral development. She was president of Society for Developmental Biology in 2012 and currently serves as an editor for the journals Developmental Biology and Evolution & Development.
Jenny Tung is an evolutionary anthropologist and geneticist. She is Director of the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and a Visiting Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University. In 2019, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2024, she was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Tung co-directs the Amboseli Baboon Research Project, a long-term study of wild baboons in Kenya.
Carmen Birchmeier-Kohler, is a German geneticist and developmental biologist. The focus of her research group is the development of embryonic tissues and the nervous system. The model organism for her investigations is the mouse.
Geneviève Défago is a former lecturer in phytopathology at the Institute of Plant Sciences in the discipline of phytomedicine at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. She was the director of interuniversity and interdisciplinary projects devoted to biological control and biosafety. In 1990, she was awarded the title of Professor. She retired at the end of July 2006.
