Boris Shraiman

Research Interests

1. Morphogenesis, addressing the problem of “Growth and Form” in animal development.
2. Statistical Genetics, which aims to quantitatively describe evolutionary dynamics in populations.

In both subjects, my work focuses on the role of interactions. In the case of morphogenesis, these are interactions between cells; in the case of population genetics, the interactions are between genetic polymorphisms. The study of “interactions” both in the developmental biology and in population genetics contexts brings up unexpected but direct and useful connections with statistical physics. Discovering, exploring and exploiting these connections in order to develop a new understanding of the biological problems, is the main goal of my research.

National Academies 

NAS 2011