Rate My Professor Susan Alberts

The research in the Alberts Lab examines the evolution of social behavior in mammals, focusing on the social behavior, demography, life history, behavioral endocrinology, genetics, and physiology of wild baboons in the Amboseli ecosystem of Kenya through the long-term Amboseli Baboon Research Project, which she co-directs. Key findings address how social bonds, dominance rank, early adversity, and environmental factors influence reproduction, survival, health, aging, and intergenerational effects. Select publications include Silk et al., "Social bonds of female baboons enhance infant survival" (Science, 2003); Archie et al., "Life at the top: energetic and psychological stress in wild male primates" (Science, 2011); Bronikowski et al., "Aging in the natural world: comparative data reveal similar mortality patterns across primates" (Science, 2011); Colchero et al., "The emergence of longevous populations" (PNAS, 2016; Cozzarelli Prize winner); Tung et al., "Gut microbiome heritability is near-universal but environmentally contingent" (Science, 2021); and Campos et al., "Social bonds, social status, and survival in wild baboons: a tale of two sexes" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2020). Alberts has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology (2023), election to the National Academy of Sciences (2019), Sewall Wright Award from the American Society of Naturalists (2021), Distinguished Primatologist Award from the American Society of Primatologists (2019), Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences (2017), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014), and AAAS Fellowship (2012). She has served on editorial boards including Behavioral Ecology (2009-2014), Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology (2003-2009), American Journal of Primatology (2000-2003), and PeerJ (2015-2017), and as Associate Director for Science at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (2010-2016).