S. Blair Hedges

Biography

Hedges has a Bachelor of Science undergraduate degree from George Mason University, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Maryland. Before he joined Temple University in 2014, he was a professor at Penn State. He is also a founding member of the NASA Astrobiology Center. He has published over 277 peer-reviewed works including 8 books and monographs. He was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009 for "revealing connections between biological evolution and Earth history in diverse groups of organisms", and was awarded the 2011 Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Life and Health Sciences.

Research Interest

His research explores connections between biological evolution and Earth history in all organisms and time periods. Because time itself is of great utility in drawing these connections, we often use molecular clocks in combination with morphology, phylogeny, geology, and the fossil record to uncover historical patterns and reveal the mechanisms of change. His team study, among other topics, speciation, adaptive radiation, lineage diversification, historical biogeography, and mass extinction. Of particular interest are global changes in the planetary environment such as continental breakup, climate change, and extraterrestrial impacts, and their effect on the evolution of life. Research topics in the lab have included the early evolution of life, vertebrate evolution, historical biogeography, primate evolution, and biodiversity & conservation. A large component of his work is computational (bioinformatics), involving the analysis of sequence data from many genes or complete genomes. Another component involves field work and collection of new DNA sequences as needed for particular questions. His laboratory is part of NASA's Astrobiology Institute.