Michael E. Hood

Michael Hood was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the evolutionary ecology of the global disease distribution of the pathogen Micobotryum violaceum, which causes anther-smut disease in plants. 

Mr. Hood was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and received both his B.A. and M.S. from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University.  After completing a four-year postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, he accepted an appointment as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Virginia, a position he held for five years before joining the biology faculty at Amherst College in 2006.  He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In addition to teaching, Mr. Hood has published numerous articles in prominent journals, among them Genetics, American Naturalist, and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

Michael Hood was honored with the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2008.