Daniel I. Bolnick

Bolnick was born in Durham North Carolina, to Bruce and Doreen Bolnick. His father Bruce was an economics professor and an alumnus of Yale University and was treasurer of the committee that organized Coed Week in the fall of 1968.{{cite tweet|user=DanielBolnick|date=June 14, 2020|number=1272357195380899847|title=My dad (Bruce Bolnick) was also involved in pushing to get women admitted to Yale. He was treasurer of the committee that organized Coed Week in the fall of 1968. He later spoke at a pivotal confrontation w President Brewster in the Trumbull College dining hall}} His mother Doreen was a librarian and is an artist. Bolnick was raised in Durham, North Carolina; Washington, DC; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Reading, Massachusetts, where he became interested in natural history.{{cite web |last1=Sprugel |first1=Doug |title=Daniel Bolnick |url=https://esa.org/history/bolnick-daniel/ |website=esa.org |access-date=December 18, 2020 |date=June 22, 2016}} He finished his final year of high school at the International School of Lusaka in Zambia.

Bolnick earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 1996 and his PhD from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in 2003. He received a Fulbright grant upon graduating from Williams College but declined to participate, instead joining the Peace Corps.{{cite web |title=Daniel I Bolnick |url=https://cns.utexas.edu/directory/item/7-integrative-biology/70-bolnick-daniel-i?Itemid=349 |website=cns.utexas.edu |access-date=December 19, 2020}} He taught high school biology and math for two years in Same, Tanzania, for the US Peace Corps before starting his graduate studies. He obtained his PhD at the University of California at Davis, initially studying with Art Woods, then Les Gottlieb, before ending up working with Peter Wainwright. In 2005, Bolnick was the co-recipient of the George Mercer Award for a single outstanding paper in ecology published during the past two years. His co-authored paper, "The ecology of individuals: incidence and implications of individual specialization", was published while he was a graduate student at UC Davis.{{cite web |title=George Mercer Award Daniel Bolnick, Richard Svanback, James Fordyce, Louis Yang, Jeremy Davis, Darrin Hulsey, and Matthew Forister |url=https://www.esa.org/history/Awards/bulletin/mercer2005.pdf |website=esa.org |access-date=December 19, 2020 |date=2005}}

Near the end of his PhD studies in 2003, Bolnick accepted his first faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin's (UT) Department of Integrative Biology, where he began in Fall 2004.{{cite web |title=EEB Welcomes New Faculty and Staff |url=https://eeb.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1312/2018/07/2018-Spring-Summer-Newsletter-June-2018-Rev4.pdf |website=eeb.uconn.edu |access-date=December 19, 2020 |date=2018}} He completed a brief postdoc with Michael Turelli and Peter Wainwright before beginning his faculty position. During his tenure at UT, he studied threespine stickleback fish in lakes and streams around Vancouver Island, British Columbia to see how species evolve. He specifically focused on lakes and streams that were created at the end of the last Ice age.{{cite web |last1=Chippard |first1=Lee H. |title=Bolnick, Wallingford Become HHMI Early Career Scientists |url=https://cns.utexas.edu/news/bolnick-wallingford-hhmi |website=cns.utexas.edu |access-date=December 18, 2020 |date=March 26, 2009}} He also studied how parasites and their hosts co-evolve, and how their antagonism shapes variation in host immunity.{{cite web |last1=Diaz |first1=Bri |title=New Faculty Members Join CLAS |url=https://today.uconn.edu/2018/08/new-faculty-members-join-clas/ |website=today.uconn.edu |access-date=December 19, 2020 |date=August 23, 2018}} In recognition of his research, he was a David and Lucile Packard Foundation 2007 Fellow{{cite web |title=Daniel I. Bolnick |url=https://www.packard.org/what-we-fund/science/packard-fellowships-for-science-and-engineering/fellowship-directory/bolnick-daniel-i/ |website=packard.org |publisher=David and Lucile Packard Foundation |access-date=December 19, 2020}} and received a 6-year fellowship as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Early Career Scientist from 2009 to 2015.

Bolnick established his own research laboratory which led projects focusing on "ecological interactions and the maintenance of genetic variation within populations and uses natural variation in wild fish populations as a tool to understand the evolution of host-parasite interactions and immune function." He was subsequently nominated for the 2015 David Starr Jordan Prize for his "innovative contributions to the study of evolution, ecology, population and organismal biology."{{cite web |last1=Hinnefeld |first1=Steve |title=University of Texas biologist to receive David Starr Jordan Prize |url=https://archive.news.iu.edu/releases/iu/2015/02/david-starr-jordan-prize.shtml |website=archive.news.iu.edu |access-date=December 19, 2020 |date=February 10, 2015}} He was the last recipient of this prize, which was discontinued in 2020 due to the racist eugenics legacy of D.S. Jordan. In 2016 Bolnick was the recipient of the O'Donnell Award from The Academy of Medicine, Engineering & Science of Texas, an award meant to recognize and promote outstanding scientific achievements of state researchers.{{cite web |last1=Airhart |first1=Marc G. |title=Daniel Bolnick to Receive O'Donnell Award from TAMEST |url=https://cns.utexas.edu/news/ut-austin-innovators-to-receive-o-donnell-awards-from-tamest |website=cns.utexas.edu |access-date=December 19, 2020 |date=December 6, 2016}}

Bolnick served as chair of the University of Texas at Austin's Graduate Program from 2014 until 2017 and was appointed editor-in-chief of the journal The American Naturalist. Upon stepping down as chair, he joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut as a full professor. During the COVID-19 pandemic in North America, like many field biologists Bolnick was unable to conduct field work with his regular research team and sought out locals who lived in the area he was studying for assistance.{{cite web |last1=Hester |first1=Jessica Leigh |title=This Is What Scientific Fieldwork Is Like During the Time of COVID-19 |url=https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2020/05/this-is-what-scientific-fieldwork-is-like-during-the-time-of-covid-19/ |website=motherjones.com |publisher=Mother Jones |access-date=December 19, 2020 |date=May 10, 2020}}

In 2015 he received the Cornell's David Starr Jordan Prize. {{cite news |url=https://www.idsnews.com/article/2015/02/iu-stanford-and-cornell-name-jordan-prize-recipient |title=IU, Stanford and Cornell name Jordan Prize recipient |date=February 10, 2015 |newspaper=Indiana Daily Student |access-date=October 18, 2020 |archive-date=October 19, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201019073041/https://www.idsnews.com/article/2015/02/iu-stanford-and-cornell-name-jordan-prize-recipient |url-status=live}}

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Category:Living people

Category:People from Reading, Massachusetts

Category:University of California, Davis alumni

Category:Williams College alumni

Category:University of Connecticut faculty

Category:University of Texas at Austin faculty

Category:American academic journal editors

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:Ecology journal editors