University at Albany faculty have recently initiated a new, interdisciplinary doctoral-research emphasis in the Evolutionary Ecology of Disease (EED). Participating faculty include researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and from the Department of Biomedical Sciences in the School of Public Health.

The past decade has witnessed a rapid increase in ecological analyses of disease in natural communities, inspiring new perspectives on the conceptual basis of population biology, and identifying applications important to public health and resource management. Evolutionary biologists have increasingly sought to understand selective pressures and genetic mechanisms governing transmission, resistance and virulence of infectious disease. Biological anthropologists have acquired novel insights concerning relationships among social structure, life histories and both infectious and chronic disease. Research interests of faculty in the EED program span these questions, and EED faculty invite applications for doctoral study.