Robert Griffiths is a mathematician and statistician working in the field of population genetics. He has made important contributions to the study of stochastic — or random — evolutionary processes, probability distributions of gene frequencies and of genealogical trees.

He is best known for developing computational algorithms for the study of both population genetics parameters and ancestral inference from DNA sequences. His work has enabled researchers to study recombination, migration and growth rates, as well as to deduce the time to the most recent common ancestor and estimate ages of mutations in genealogical trees.

Robert is currently Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Genetics in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. He has served as Associate Editor on a number of editorial boards and published over 100 papers. In addition, he is regularly invited to lecture about his findings at conferences all over the world.