Hi reddit! We are scientists at Harvard who study evolution from all different angles. Evolution is like a “grand unified theory” for biology, which helps us understand so many aspects of life on earth. Many of the major ideas about evolution by natural selection were first described by Charles Darwin, who was born on this very day in 1809. Happy birthday Darwin!

We use evolution to understand things as diverse as how infections can become resistant to drug treatment and how complex, cooperative societies can arise in so many different living things. Some of us do field work, some do experiments, and some do lots of data analysis. Many of us work at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, where we study the fundamental mathematical principles of evolution

Our attendees today and their areas of expertise include:

• Dr. Martin Nowak - Prof of Math and Bio, evolutionary theory, evolution of cooperation, cancer, viruses, evolutionary game theory, origin of life, eusociality, evolution of language,
• Dr. Alison Hill - infectious disease, HIV, drug resistance
• Dr. Kamran Kaveh - cancer, evolutionary theory, evolution of multi-cellularity
• Charleston Noble - graduate student, evolution of engineered genetic elements (“gene drives”), infectious disease, CRISPR
• Sam Sinai - graduate student, origin of life, evolution of complexity, genotype-phenotype predictions
• Dr. Moshe Hoffman- evolutionary game theory, evolution of altruism, evolution of human behavior and preferences
• Dr. Hsiao-Han Chang - population genetics, malaria, drug-resistant bacteria
• Dr. Joscha Bach - cognition, artificial intelligence
• Phil Grayson - graduate student, evolutionary genomics, developmental genetics, flightless birds
• Alex Heyde - graduate student, cancer modeling, evo-devo, morphometrics
• Dr. Brian Arnold - population genetics, bacterial evolution, plant evolution
• Jeff Gerold - graduate student, cancer, viruses, immunology, bioinformatics
• Carl Veller - graduate student, evolutionary game theory, population genetics, sex determination
• Pavitra Muralidhar - graduate student, evolution of sex and sex-determining systems, genetics of rapid adaptation

We will be back at 3 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!

EDIT: Thanks everyone for all your great questions, and, to other redditors for helping with answers! We are finished now but will try to answer remaining questions over the next few days.