Lee Altenberg is an American theoretical biologist. He is on the faculty of the Departments of Information and Computer Sciences and of Mathematics at the

University of Hawaii at Mānoa A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

. He is best known for his work that helped establish the evolution of evolvability and modularity in the

genotype–phenotype map The genotype–phenotype map is a conceptual model in genetic architecture. Coined in a 1991 paper by Pere Alberch, it models the interdependency of genotype (an organism's full hereditary information) with phenotype (an organism's actual obser ...

as areas of investigation in evolutionary biology, for moving theoretical concepts between the fields of

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

and evolutionary computation, and for his mathematical unification and generalization of modifier gene models for the evolution of biological information transmission, putting under a single mathematical framework the evolution of mutation rates, recombination rates, sexual reproduction rates, and dispersal rates. Altenberg is an Associate Editor of the journal ''

BioSystems ''BioSystems'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering experimental, computational, and theoretical research that links biology, evolution, and the information processing sciences. It was established in 1967 as ''Currents in Modern B ...

'', and serves on the Editorial Boards of the journals '' Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines'' and ''

Artificial Life Artificial life (often abbreviated ALife or A-Life) is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry ...

'', and on the

IEEE Computational Intelligence Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

Task Force on Artificial Life and Complex Adaptive Systems.

Education

Altenberg received his B.A. in genetics in 1980 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

with an honors thesis advised by Glenys Thomson on the theory of

frequency-dependent selection Frequency-dependent selection is an evolutionary process by which the fitness (biology), fitness of a phenotype or genotype depends on the phenotype or genotype composition of a given population. * In positive frequency-dependent selection, the fit ...

. He received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences in 1985 at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

with advisor Marcus W. Feldman with a dissertation that unified models of modifier gene evolution.

Career

Altenberg held postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University, North Carolina State University, and Duke University. While a postdoctoral fellow at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, Altenberg offered the first course on evolutionary computation to be given there. When his father became ill with

cryoglobulinemia Cryoglobulinemia is a medical condition in which the blood contains large amounts of pathological cold sensitive antibodies called cryoglobulins – proteins (mostly immunoglobulins themselves) that become insoluble at reduced temperatures. T ...

, he moved with him to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

for the warm temperatures. In 2002 Altenberg was appointed associate professor of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. He again offered the first courses in evolutionary computation to be given there. In 2013 Altenberg was a Long-Term Visitor at the

Mathematical Biosciences Institute The Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI) is an institution of higher learning affiliated with the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. MBI received major funding from the National Science Foundation. History Under the leadership of fou ...

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

and in 2014-2016 was a Senior Fellow at the

Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research The Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) is an international center for advanced studies in the life and sustainability sciences. It is a "Home to Theory that Matters" that supports the articulation, analysis, and int ...

. The University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents approved his promotion to Full Professor in 2020. Since 2013, Altenberg has been a Research Scholar at the

Ronin Institute The Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, commonly called just the Ronin Institute, is an independent scholarly research institute located in Montclair, New Jersey, United States. The institute is dedicated to multidisciplinary study of sci ...

Research

Altenberg's research focuses on uncovering the mathematical relationships within the dynamics of biological evolution, and

evolutionary algorithms In computational intelligence (CI), an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is a subset of evolutionary computation, a generic population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. An EA uses mechanisms inspired by biological evolution, such as reproduc ...

. He is particularly interested in higher order phenomena such as the evolution of

evolvability Evolvability is defined as the capacity of a system for adaptive evolution. Evolvability is the ability of a population of organisms to not merely generate genetic diversity, but to generate ''adaptive'' genetic diversity, and thereby evolve throu ...

, the evolution of

genetic information A nucleic acid sequence is a succession of bases signified by a series of a set of five different letters that indicate the order of nucleotides forming alleles within a DNA (using GACT) or RNA (GACU) molecule. By convention, sequences are usua ...

transmission, and the evolution of the

. His chief accomplishments have been (1) to unify the theory for the evolution of genetic systems (recombination and mutation rates) by embedding them in the space of inclusive inheritance, which includes spatial as well as cultural information, and (2) to develop the concept of the

variational properties In evolutionary biology, the variational properties of an organism are those properties relating to the production of variation among its offspring. In a broader sense variational properties include phenotypic plasticity. Wagner, G. P. and Altenbe ...

of organisms as phenomena subject to evolutionary dynamics. This includes the discovery of mechanisms that lead to the evolution of

, and modularity in the genotype–phenotype map. The mathematical inclusiveness of his theoretical work has made it applicable to problems in evolutionary computation. His work on the evolution of biological information transmission has required development of new spectral theorems for

linear operators In mathematics, and more specifically in linear algebra, a linear map (also called a linear mapping, linear transformation, vector space homomorphism, or in some contexts linear function) is a mapping V \to W between two vector spaces that pre ...

, including a unification of reaction-diffusion theory predicting the evolution of slow dispersal with the Reduction Principle predictions for models of mutation, recombination and migration rate evolution. He has applied spectral theory to understand the evolution of

mutational robustness In evolutionary biology, robustness of a biological system (also called biological or genetic robustness) is the persistence of a certain characteristic or trait in a system under perturbations or conditions of uncertainty. Robustness in developm ...

. Altenberg introduced a number of concepts which have been adopted in several fields: * introduction of the

Price equation In the theory of evolution and natural selection, the Price equation (also known as Price's equation or Price's theorem) describes how a trait or allele changes in frequency over time. The equation uses a covariance between a trait and fitness, ...

into evolutionary computation theory * mechanisms for the evolution of evolvability and modularity * the conceptual distinction of generative and

of the genotype–phenotype map * brood selection in evolutionary algorithms * generalization of

Stuart Kauffman Stuart Alan Kauffman (born September 28, 1939) is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylv ...

's NK Landscapes, applied to technological evolution * generalization of the Reduction Principle to infinite dimensional spaces, which unified reaction-diffusion models for the evolution of dispersal, and has been applied to epidemic models.

Environmental and societal work

* A history of

Leland Stanford Amasa Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824June 21, 1893) was an American industrialist and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 8th governor of California from 1862 to 1863 and represented California in the United States Se ...

's forgotten advocacy of

worker cooperatives A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by ...

* Light pollution ordinance for Maui, Hawai`i * Preservation of lowland dry native forest on Maui, Hawai`i * During the

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...

pandemic he has served with the Hawai`i Pandemic Applied Modeling Workgroup.

Awards and honors

* California delegate to the National Youth Science Camp in 1975 *

University of California Regents The Regents of the University of California (also referred to as the Board of Regents to distinguish the board from the corporation it governs of the same name) is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a state university sys ...

Scholar 1975-1979 * Elected to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

in 1979 * Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in General Scholarship, University of California, Berkeley, 1980 * Stanford University School of Medicine Dean's Postdoctoral Fellow 1985-1986 * Chair of the Native Hawaiian Plant Society on Maui 2005-2007 * Onipa`a Award in 2011, conferred by the Hawai`i Chapter of the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...

, for his work in getting legislation passed to prevent

light pollution Light pollution is the presence of unwanted, inappropriate, or excessive use of artificial Visible spectrum, lighting. In a descriptive sense, the term ''light pollution'' refers to the effects of any poorly implemented lighting, during the day ...

Maui The island of Maui (; Hawaiian: ) is the second-largest of the islands of the state of Hawaii at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2) and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which ...

, and to preserve an endangered Hawaiian lowland dry forest habitat on Maui in perpetuity. * Senior Fellow of the

2014-2016 *

Oral History Project interview in 2017 * Member of the

Foundational Questions Institute The Foundational Questions Institute, styled FQXi, is an organization that provides grants to "catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology." It was founded in 2005 by cosmologists Max Tegmark ...

(FQXi) in 2020

Professional societies

Altenberg is a lifetime member of the: *

International Linear Algebra Society The International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS) is a professional mathematical society organized to promote research and education in linear algebra, matrix theory and matrix computation. It serves the international community through conferences, ...

Society for Mathematical Biology The Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB) is an international association co-founded in 1972 in the United States by George Karreman, Herbert Daniel Landahl and (initially chaired) by Anthony Bartholomay for the furtherance of joint scientific ac ...

External links

Lee Altenberg's homepage

Google scholar profile

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Altenberg, Lee Living people Population geneticists Evolutionary biologists University of Hawaiʻi faculty Stanford University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Year of birth missing (living people)