Steven A. Frank
The Distinguished Naturalist Award is given annually to an active midcareer scientist who has made significant contributions to the knowledge of a particular ecosystem or group of organisms and who, through this work, has illuminated key principles of evolutionary biology and an enhanced appreciation of natural history. The winner of the 2026 Distinguished Naturalist Award is Dr. Steven A. Frank (University of California, Irvine).
Steven Frank has fundamentally reshaped the landscape of modern biology by developing rigorous mathematical frameworks that bridge the gap between individual-level mechanisms and population-level patterns. By extending evolutionary principles into unconventional domains—such as the dynamics of cancer progression, the "mother’s curse" in mitochondrial inheritance, and the link between biochemical thermodynamics and microbial design—Frank has provided a universal language for understanding organismal design. His contributions move beyond specific biological cases to uncover the foundational statistical and information-theoretic symmetries that govern all of nature’s diverse patterns. Key contributions span diverse fields including social and microbial evolution, biomedical synthesis, cancer and immunology, and biological robustness. Frank has influenced generations of evolutionary biologists and ecologists and demonstrated how our fundamental understanding of natural selection is key to our understanding of disease, health and the natural world.
Adam Siepielski (chair)
Trevor Price
Andrew Suarez
Stuart West