Stephen Stearns joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University in 2000 after having spent 17 years in Basel, Switzerland, as Director of the Zoology Institute. At Yale he is Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and has been chair of his department since July, 2002. He received his PhD in Zoology from the University of British Columbia in 1975, was a Miller Fellow at Berkeley 1975-1978, and taught at Reed College in Portland, Oregon 1978-1983. He co-founded the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (1987) and the Tropical Biology Association (1990). Dr. Stearns' research interests are in life history evolution, evolutionary functional genomics, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary genetics, the evolution of aging, and evolutionary medicine. He is the author of several influential books on evolution and evolutionary medicine.