Daniel I. Bolnick

Daniel I. Bolnick
Born
Durham, North Carolina, US
OccupationProfessor
AwardsDobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution; Young Investigator Prize from the American Society of Naturalists; Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America; David Starr Jordan Prize from Stanford, Cornell, and Indiana Universities; O'Donnell Prize from the Texas Academy of Medicine Science Engineering and Technology; Member, Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering;
Academic background
EducationBA, 1996, Williams College
PhD, 2003, University of California, Davis
ThesisThe diversifying effect of intraspecific competition (2003)
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Connecticut
University of Texas at Austin
Websitebolnicklab.wordpress.com

Daniel I. Bolnick is an American evolutionary biologist. He is a full professor at the University of Connecticut. He was editor-in-chief of the journal The American Naturalist from 1998-2003, and President of The American Society of Naturalists in 2025.

Early life and education[edit]

Bolnick was born in Durham North Carolina, to Bruce and Doreen Bolnick. His father Bruce was an economics professor and an alumnus of Yale University and was treasurer of the committee that organized Coed Week in the fall of 1968.[1] His mother Doreen was a librarian and is an artist. Bolnick was raised in Durham, North Carolina; Washington, DC; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Reading, Massachusetts, where he became interested in natural history.[2] He finished his final year of high school at the International School of Lusaka in Zambia.

Bolnick earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 1996 and his PhD from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in 2003. He received a Fulbright grant upon graduating from Williams College but declined to participate, instead joining the Peace Corps.[3] He taught high school biology and math for two years in Same, Tanzania, for the US Peace Corps before starting his graduate studies. He obtained his PhD at the University of California at Davis, initially studying with Art Woods, then Les Gottlieb, before ending up working with Peter Wainwright. In 2005, Bolnick was the co-recipient of the George Mercer Award for a single outstanding paper in ecology published during the past two years. His co-authored paper, "The ecology of individuals: incidence and implications of individual specialization", was published while he was a graduate student at UC Davis.[4]

Career[edit]

Near the end of his PhD studies in 2003, Bolnick accepted his first faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin's (UT) Department of Integrative Biology, where he began in Fall 2004.[5] He completed a brief postdoc with Michael Turelli and Peter Wainwright before beginning his faculty position. During his tenure at UT, he studied threespine stickleback fish in lakes and streams around Vancouver Island, British Columbia to see how species evolve. He specifically focused on lakes and streams that were created at the end of the last Ice age.[6] He also studied how parasites and their hosts co-evolve, and how their antagonism shapes variation in host immunity.[7] In recognition of his research, he was a David and Lucile Packard Foundation 2007 Fellow[8] and received a 6-year fellowship as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Early Career Scientist from 2009 to 2015.[6]

Bolnick established his own research laboratory which led projects focusing on "ecological interactions and the maintenance of genetic variation within populations and uses natural variation in wild fish populations as a tool to understand the evolution of host-parasite interactions and immune function." He was subsequently nominated for the 2015 David Starr Jordan Prize for his "innovative contributions to the study of evolution, ecology, population and organismal biology."[9] He was the last recipient of this prize, which was discontinued in 2020 due to the racist eugenics legacy of D.S. Jordan. In 2016 Bolnick was the recipient of the O'Donnell Award from The Academy of Medicine, Engineering & Science of Texas, an award meant to recognize and promote outstanding scientific achievements of state researchers.[10]

Bolnick served as chair of the University of Texas at Austin's Graduate Program from 2014 until 2017 and was appointed editor-in-chief of the journal The American Naturalist.[5] Upon stepping down as chair, he joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut as a full professor.[7] During the COVID-19 pandemic in North America, like many field biologists Bolnick was unable to conduct field work with his regular research team and sought out locals who lived in the area he was studying for assistance.[11]

References[edit]

  1. ^ @DanielBolnick (June 15, 2020). "My dad (Bruce Bolnick) was also involved in pushing to get women admitted to Yale. He was treasurer of the committee that organized Coed Week in the fall of 1968. He later spoke at a pivotal confrontation w President Brewster in the Trumbull College dining hall" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  2. ^ Sprugel, Doug (June 22, 2016). "Daniel Bolnick". esa.org. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  3. ^ "Daniel I Bolnick". cns.utexas.edu. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
  4. ^ "George Mercer Award Daniel Bolnick, Richard Svanback, James Fordyce, Louis Yang, Jeremy Davis, Darrin Hulsey, and Matthew Forister" (PDF). esa.org. 2005. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
  5. ^ a b "EEB Welcomes New Faculty and Staff" (PDF). eeb.uconn.edu. 2018. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
  6. ^ a b Chippard, Lee H. (March 26, 2009). "Bolnick, Wallingford Become HHMI Early Career Scientists". cns.utexas.edu. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  7. ^ a b Diaz, Bri (August 23, 2018). "New Faculty Members Join CLAS". today.uconn.edu. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
  8. ^ "Daniel I. Bolnick". packard.org. David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
  9. ^ Hinnefeld, Steve (February 10, 2015). "University of Texas biologist to receive David Starr Jordan Prize". archive.news.iu.edu. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
  10. ^ Airhart, Marc G. (December 6, 2016). "Daniel Bolnick to Receive O'Donnell Award from TAMEST". cns.utexas.edu. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
  11. ^ Hester, Jessica Leigh (May 10, 2020). "This Is What Scientific Fieldwork Is Like During the Time of COVID-19". motherjones.com. Mother Jones. Retrieved December 19, 2020.

External links[edit]

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