Alison Bell

Alison M. Bell is Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior, Director of the Kellner Center for Neurogenomics, Behavior and Society and the Leader of the Gene Networks in Neural and Developmental Plasticity theme at the Carl Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Bell earned a Bachelor’s degree in History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago, a PhD in Population Biology at the University of California, Davis. Bell’s research is focused on individual differences in behavior, using threespined stickleback fish as a model organism, and integrates approaches from neuroscience, genomics and evolutionary biology to understand why individuals differ from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. Bell is a 2020 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the 2012 Young Investigator Award and the 2022 Quest Award from the Animal Behavior Society. As a Guggenheim fellow, Bell will work towards generating a conceptual framework for connecting genetic variation to differences in neural circuitry and the evolution of behavior, and will write about the societal implications of what we’re learning about behavioral development from neurogenomics.