Joshua S. Weitz is an American biologist. He is both a professor of biology and the Clark Leadership Chair in Data Analytics at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...

. Previously, he was a professor at

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part o ...

, where he was the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences. In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

Education

He earned his A.B at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

in 1997 and his Ph.D. in physics at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

in 2003.

Research

Weitz's interests are the dynamics and structure of complex biology systems. In particular, Joshua Weitz's research focuses on the quantitative evaluation of virus-host interactions. The quantitative edge that he brought to the field is summarized in the award winning book ''Quantitative Viral Ecology'', which won the 2016 Postgraduate Textbook Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Biology. While in graduate school, he co-authored a widely cited paper, Re-examination of the “3/4-law” of Metabolism, published in the ''Journal of Theoretical Biology''. As a post-doctoral scholar, he published Coevolutionary arms races between bacteria and bacteriophage in the ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences''. His notable more recent publications include Statistical structure of host–phage interactions, ''PNAS'' (2011), Ocean viruses and their effects on microbial communities and biogeochemical cycles, ''F1000 Bio. Rep.'' (2012), Viral tagging reveals discrete populations in Synechococcus viral genome sequence space, ''Nature'' (2014), and An oscillating tragedy of the commons in replicator dynamics with game-environment feedback, ''PNAS'' (2016).

Other Activities

Weitz has published poetry, including a book of poems he wrote in college, ''Between Two Stones''. He has also been politically active, writing in the ''Chronicle for Higher Education'' about advocating for science, and speaking at the Atlanta

March for Science The March for Science (formerly known as the Scientists' March on Washington) is an international series of rallies and marches held on Earth Day. The inaugural march was held on April 22, 2017, in Washington, D.C., and more than 600 other cit ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weitz, Joshua Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Georgia Tech faculty 21st-century American biologists Princeton University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni