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David Hillis was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, but spent his formative years
in tropical Africa and India. In this environment, Hillis learned a love of
biology, entertaining himself by making collections of butterflies,
amphibians, and reptiles. He moved to Baltimore, Maryland for his secondary
education, and to Texas for college. Hillis received his B.S. degree (with
honors) from Baylor University in 1980, and M.A., M.Ph. and Ph.D. (all with
honors) from The University of Kansas in 1983, 1984, and 1985,
respectively. After two years on the faculty at the University of Miami, he
joined the Department of Zoology at UT Austin in 1987 and was awarded a
prestigious National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator
Award the same year. In 1992, he was appointed to the Alfred W. Roark
Centennial Professorship in Natural Sciences, and in 1998 became the first
Director of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of
Texas-Austin. He is currently on the faculties of the Section of Integrative Biology, the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology,
and the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics. David Hillis's research interests span much of biology, from development of statistical and computational methods for analyzing DNA sequences, to molecular studies of viral epidemiology, to studies of the diversity and phylogeny of life (particularly vertebrates), to the origin and behavior of unisexual organisms. He has published over 130 scholarly articles and two technical books, and has served as Editor or Associate Editor of a dozen scientific journals. He is an active member of many scholarly societies and national research panels, and has served as the President of the Society of Systematic Biologists. In the past decade, the 23 graduate students and 12 postdocs in his laboratory have produced an additional 120 independent scholarly articles. Hillis is an avid teacher and spends many hours in the field with students in the southwestern United States and Mexico. He is an active proponent of learning science through practical experience, and uses a combination of laboratories, field work, and computer-based analyses extensively in his teaching. He has been active on UT-Austin Committees in the areas of faculty recruitment, development of computer and technology resources, development and reorganization of the life sciences, and the interaction among the biological, computational, and mathematical sciences. Twin attributes of fairness and consensus-building characterize Hillis and make him the ideal leader and guide for the new School of Biological Sciences during its formative years and into the new millennium. The 40-year-old Hillis enjoys spending time in the country with his wife and two sons, ages 7 and 10. His hobbies include bowhunting, canoeing, horticulture of wild plants, photography, and kajukembo (a martial art form that combines karate, judo, jujitsu, kempo, and kung fu). |