Marcos Vieira

Before moving to Sarah Cobey’s lab at the University of Chicago as a PhD student, he graduated and got a Master’s in biology back in Brazil (where he was born). He’s done a bunch of different things as a scientist in training since he was an undergrad.

Although now his research is done in a computer most of the time, he actually started as a field ecologist, chasing dragonflies in the field and watching them fight with each other to understand how their behavior evolved. After realizing the dragonflies were smarter than he was, Marcos began to focus on theoretical and computational stuff, and developed a model to simulate the co-extinction of plants and their pollinators. Now he’s trying to figure out what we can learn about evolution from the immune system, and what we can learn about the immune system from evolution. Besides doing science, he likes archery and photography.