Women in Science and Engineering at Yale (2020 Edition)

Martha Muñoz, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Affiliate Faculty, Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies

Martha Muñoz studies how organisms interact with their physical environments and how those interactions shape major patterns of evolution. In her work, she has discovered that behavior is a major pacemaker for evolution; specifically that behavior can accelerate or slow evolution and that it sometimes does both. She has found that organisms are the architects of their selective environments and of their own evolutionary trajectories. Her contributions to the field have been recognized with the Young Investigator Prize from the American Society of Naturalists and with the Distinguished Alumni “Rising Star” Award from Boston University. She is listed as the “Scientist to Watch” in the November 2019 issue of The Scientist Magazine.

Four–bar linkages are mechanical systems that have repeatedly evolved in nature. We can use the mechanics of these systems to predict major patterns of evolution over deep time. Mechanical rules therefore impact the dynamic process of evolution. Photo credit: Martha Muñoz