Sarah Perin "Sally" Otto (born October 23, 1967) is a theoretical biologist,

Canada Research Chair Canada Research Chair (CRC) is a title given to certain Canadian university research professors by the Canada Research Chairs Program. Program goals The Canada Research Chair program was established in 2000 as a part of the Government of Canada ...

in Theoretical and Experimental Evolution, and is currently a Killam Professor at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

. From 2008-2016, she was the director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the

. Otto was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow. In 2015 the American Society of Naturalists gave her the Sewall Wright Award for fundamental contributions to the unification of biology. In 2021, she was awarded the Darwin-Wallace Medal for contributing major advances to the mathematical theory of evolution.

Education

Otto received her

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in 1988 and her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 1992 from

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 ...

. She did post-doctoral research with Nick Barton at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

Research focus

Otto's research focus is a multi-pronged approach of population-genetic mathematical models and statistical tools to understand how evolutionary processes generate diverse biological features. The core of her research revolves around analyzing mathematical models and exploring the insights they yield about how biological systems evolve. Dr. Otto is also the author of the book "A Biologist's Guide to Mathematical Modeling in Ecology and Evolution". Through the analysis and development of stochastic models, Dr. Otto's colleagues and herself have shown how genes are transmitted across generations, the context in which genes are expressed, and how evolutionary constraints influence life trait evolution. The second major component of Dr. Otto's research involves the development of statistical tools such as likelihood-based approaches that allow them to infer how particular traits influence speciation and extinction. This allows us to answer questions such as: Do pollinators promote speciation of colorful flowers? Does genome size influence diversification? According to Otto, her research uses "mathematical models to clarify how features of an organism affect its potential for and rate of

adaptation In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...

. She also steps back to address why such features vary in the first place. Why is it that some species produce offspring primarily by cloning themselves, whereas others never do? Why do some species have large

genomes In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding gen ...

with many

chromosomes A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

, while others are streamlined?" Otto's recent work has investigated the

genomic Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

changes that underlie adaptation by yeast to harsh environmental conditions.

Awards

* Darwin-Wallace Medal (2021) * Canadian Society for Ecology & Evolution President's Award (2017) * Sewall Wright Award (2015) * Elected member of (US)

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

(2013) *

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in Natural Sciences For Research (2011) * MacArthur Fellowship For Research (2011) *

Steacie Prize The Steacie Prize is a scientific prize awarded to a person of 40 years or younger who has made notable contributions to research in Canada. It was first awarded in 1964, to Jan Van Kranendonk, and it has since been given annually. The award is nam ...

(2007) * Royal Society of Canada Fellow (2006) * McDowell Award for Excellence in Research (2003) * NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2001) * American Society of Naturalists Jasper Loftus-Hills Young Investigator Award (1995)

Science communication

Since 2013 Otto has been the director of the Liber Ero Fellowship program, a post-doctoral fellowship program that supports early-career scientists to conduct and communicate research that informs conservation and management issues. In 2006 she co-founded the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution. She has also served as the Vice-President and President for

The Society for the Study of Evolution The Society for the Study of Evolution is a professional organization of evolutionary biologists. It was formed in the United States in 1946 to promote evolution and the integration of various fields of science concerned with evolution and to organ ...

, The American Society of Naturalists and

The European Society of Evolutionary Biology The European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) was founded in 1987 in Basel (Switzerland) with around 450 evolutionary biologists attending the inaugural congress. It is an academic society that brings together more than 1500 evolutionary bi ...

as well as a council member of The Society for the Study of Evolution and the American Genetic Association.

Bibliography

* ''A Biologist's Guide to Mathematical Modeling in Ecology and Evolution'', Sarah P. Otto & Troy Day, 2007, 752 pages, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,

References

External links

UBC personal website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Otto, Sarah Mathematical ecologists Living people Stanford University alumni University of British Columbia faculty Academics of the University of Edinburgh MacArthur Fellows Canadian women academics Women evolutionary biologists Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Canada Research Chairs 1967 births Theoretical biologists