Santiago Herrera Álvarez, PhD, graduated in Winter 2025 from the Ecology and Evolution program and received the Program Award for Outstanding Performance in the General Field of Ecology and Evolution. His dissertation, Biased Forms Most Beautiful: The Structure of a Molecular Genotype-Phenotype Map and Its Influence on Phenotypic Diversity, conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph Thornton, explored how the architecture of molecular systems shapes the evolutionary pathways available to organisms. His work offers fundamental insights into how biases in genotype-phenotype mapping can influence the emergence and limits of biological diversity.
At the University of Chicago, he combined experimental and computational approaches to investigate the constraints and affordances encoded in molecular systems, advancing our understanding of how evolution works at a mechanistic level.
He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Heidelberg, where he continues to study evolutionary biology at the interface of molecular structure, function, and history.