J. Timothy Wootton, PhD, Professor of Ecology and Evolution, has been appointed chair of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, effective May 1, 2022.
Wootton is a field ecologist who integrates field experiments, long-term data on ecological dynamics, and quantitative methods to understand how natural ecosystems function and respond to environmental impacts. A core focus of his work is how the ecological network of species interactions mediates the ecological and evolutionary impacts of species extinction, exotic species introductions, shifts in ecological disturbance regimes, changes in controls on ecosystem productivity, and global scale physical and biogeochemical changes to the environment. His work also informs applied issues like the management of endangered species, the impacts of river damming, the nexus of riparian, fishery, and forestry management, the consequences of ocean acidification, and the role of ecological context in pathogen dynamics.
Wootton graduated from Cornell University prior to graduate school at the University of Washington. He completed his PhD in Zoology, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Miller Foundation for Basic Research in the Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America, a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Naturalists and was elected Secretary of the American Society of Naturalists. He has been on the editorial boards of Ecology, Ecological Monographs, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and Ecology Letters, and has been a representative to the Organization for Tropical Studies. At UChicago, he has served on several departmental, divisional, and university-wide committees, including the BSD Graduate Education Advisory Committee and Committee on Graduate Admissions and the Provost’s Committees on Campus Planning, Student Life, and Women’s and Family Issues.
As chair of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology (CEB), Wootton will follow Michael Coates, PhD, Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, who has chaired the Committee since 2008. During his tenure, the training program celebrated its 50th anniversary and maintained an outstanding international reputation while weathering various challenges, significantly contributing to UChicago’s ranking No. 1 for paleontology three times in U.S. News & World Report’s quadrennial rankings of graduate science programs.
Coates’ priority as chair was to sustain and develop the vision of his predecessors, embodied in the distinctive character of the CEB. The training program embraced its scholarly community of Chicago-area affiliate scientific institutions, including the Field Museum, Argonne National Laboratory, Lincoln Park and Brookfield Zoos, the Morton Arboretum and Chicago Botanic Garden. From this exceptional foundation, the program has continued to foster the careers of 175+ students through its unique, multidisciplinary, collaborative intellectual environment.
