NEIL SHUBIN is the Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and associate dean for academic strategy of the university's Biological Sciences Division. He's the author of Some Assembly Required: Decoding 4 Billion Years of Life Using Ancient Fossils and DNA and the New York Times bestsellers, The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body (2013) and Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (2008). Your Inner Fish was named best book of the year by the National Academy of Sciences. In 2015, Shubin hosted the Emmy Award-winning PBS miniseries based on Your Inner Fish.
The focus of Shubin's research is the great transitions in the history of life. He's led expeditions on all seven continents, including both northern and southern polar regions, in search of fossils and has discovered some of the earliest mammals, crocodiles, dinosaurs, frogs, and salamanders in the fossil record. One of his most significant discoveries, the 375-million-year-old Tiktaalik roseae fossil, is considered an important transitional form between fish and land animals. The 2006 announcement of the finding received worldwide media coverage and led to Shubin being named ABC News Person of the Week and two appearances on The Colbert Report. He's made many other notable discoveries on the developmental biology of limbs, revealing the genetic and developmental processes that led to anatomical transformations. Shubin is also committed to sharing the importance of science with the public, and his lab maintains an active presence on Facebook and Twitter.
Shubin earned his Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard and has received numerous honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship and election to the National Academy of Sciences.
