Sex, Viruses, and the Statistical Physics of Evolution

Richard Neher is a post-doctoral fellow at KITP, and recipient of the 2009 Harvey L. Karp Discovery Award*. He works on problems in biophysics and evolutionary biology. Born in Germany, he earned his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Goettingen and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Munich. After working on percolation phase transitions and integral geometry, he studied physical properties of nucleic acids and dynamics of chromatin for his thesis. He came to KITP in 2007 as post-doctoral fellow to work with Boris Shraiman and submerged himself deeper into the fascinating world of biology, trying to understand how evolution has shaped the genomes of present day organisms and produced the extraordinary diversity and complexity by rewiring and altering existing genes and circuits.
*Award generously funded by international business leader and entrepreneur Harvey Karp