Prof. Paul Rainey, Ph.D.

Paul Rainey is Director of the Department of Microbial Population Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and Head of the Laboratoire Génétique de l’Evolution at the Ècole Supérieur de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris (ESPCI Paris-Tech).

He studied biology at the University of Canterbury, where he also completed his Ph.D. In 1989 he went to the University of Cambridge, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow. Between 1991 and 2003 he held several excellent positions at the University of Oxford and other institutions in Oxford. In 2003 he returned to New Zealand initially at the University of Auckland and finally, 2007, as professor of evolutionary genetics to the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study at the Massey University‘s Albany campus. In 2011 he was appointed member of the Max Planck Society and external director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. From February 2017 he will establish his own Department of Microbial Population Biology at the MPI for Evolutionary Biology.

Paul Rainey is highly respected scientist and one of the world's most prominent representatives of experimental evolutionary biology. His work focuses on evolutionary processes, particularly evolution through natural selection. He works both theoretical and empirical and uses microbial populations to observe and dissect evolution in real time. Paul Rainey’s work focuses on evolutionary processes, particularly on evolution by natural selection.

He is a Visiting Fellow in May and June 2018 in the context of the CAS Research Group "Recreating the Origin of Life" following an invitation from Prof. Dr. Dieter Braun.

On 17 May 2018 he will talk at CAS about "Ecological Scaffolding and the Evolution of Individuality". On 30 May 2018 he will give a lecture on "Bubble-Based Evolution" in the context of the symposiums "Mechanisms of Evolution" which takes place at the Faculty of Physics.