Beth Shapiro facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Beth Shapiro
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Shapiro in 2010
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Beth Alison Shapiro
1976 (age 47–48) Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
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| Known for | How to Clone a Mammoth |
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| Thesis | Inferring evolutionary history and processes using ancient DNA (2003) |
| Doctoral advisor | Alan J. Cooper |
Beth Alison Shapiro (born 1976) is an American evolutionary molecular biologist. She is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Shapiro's work has centered on the analysis of ancient DNA. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009 and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2006.
Early life and education
Shapiro was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania on January 14, 1976. She grew up in Rome, Georgia, where she served as a local news presenter while attending Rome High School.
She graduated from Rome High School with a GPA of 4.0, and entered the University of Georgia in 1994. She studied Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English literature, and geology prior to choosing ecology as her major. She graduated summa cum laude in 1999 with BA and MA degrees in ecology. The same year, she was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford for research on inferring evolutionary history and processes using ancient DNA supervised by Alan J. Cooper.
Career
Shapiro was appointed a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Oxford in 2004. The same year she was appointed director of the Henry Wellcome Biomolecules Centre at Oxford, a position she held until 2007. In 2006, she was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. While at the Biomolecules Centre, Shapiro carried out mitochondrial DNA analysis of the dodo.
Shapiro's research on ecology has been published in leading journals including Molecular Biology and Evolution, PLOS Biology, Science and Nature. In 2007, she was named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of 37 young American innovators under the age of 36.
Publications
Her peer reviewed publications in scientific journals and books include:
- Life as We Made It: How 50,000 years of human innovation refined – and redefined – nature
- Bayesian coalescent inference of past population dynamics from molecular sequences
- Rise and fall of the Beringian steppe bison
- Ancient DNA: Methods and Protocols
- How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction
- Flight of the Dodo
- A late Pleistocene steppe bison (Bison priscus) partial carcass from Tsiigehtchic, Northwest Territories, Canada
Honors and awards
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023)
- National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2010)
- University of Georgia Young Alumnus Award (2010)
- MacArthur Fellowship (2009)
- Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2006)
- Rhodes Scholarship (1999)
