Andrew Read is Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Entomology, and Eberly Professor in Biotechnology. He is also Director of Penn State’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and Penn State’s new center in Evolutionary Risk Analysis and Mitigation. Andrew received his PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Oxford after his earlier training at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He was Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, UK, from 1998 until 2007. Andrew has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2003), Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin (2006), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012), Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2014), and Fellow of the Royal Society (2015). 

Andrew Read’s work has revealed the evolutionary forces that shape pathogen virulence, infectivity, vaccine escape and drug and insecticide resistance in a number of significant infections. This helps determine the evolutionary risks associated with medical, public and animal health interventions, and suggests novels ways to ameliorate those risks.