Sarah Perin "Sally" Otto (born October 23, 1967) is a theoretical biologist, Canada Research Chair in Theoretical and Experimental Evolution, and is currently a Killam Professor at the University of British Columbia. From 2008-2016, she was the director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia. 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. in 1988 and her Ph.D. 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.

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 with many chromosomes, 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 Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Canada judges to have "made remarkable contributions in the arts, the humanities and the sciences, as well as in Canadian public l ...

(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 American Society of Naturalists and The European Society of Evolutionary Biology 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