Dr. Brandon Ogbunu

C. Brandon Ogbunu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. A computational biologist, his research investigates the causes and consequences of human disease using population genetics and mathematical methods. In addition, he runs a parallel research program at the intersection of science, society, and culture,  where he writes, gives public lectures, and creates media of various kinds. In this capacity, he is currently an Ideas contributor at Wired Magazine. In addition, he has written for a range of publications including Scientific American, Undark, and the Boston Review. He has also performed for Story Collider and was recently featured in a June 2020 episode of WNYC’s Radiolab. He was also featured in the Emmy Award-winning PBS web series Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings. 

He received his Doctor of Philosophy in 2010 from Yale University (Microbiology) and did postdoctoral work at Harvard University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He has held visiting scientist positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (at the University of California, Santa Barbara), and the American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY).  Prior to coming to Yale, Brandon was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University and affiliated with the Center for Computational Molecular Biology. 

He is the past recipient of a United States William J. Fulbright fellowship, a UNCF-Merck Fellowship, the George Washington Henderson Fellowship (University of Vermont)  the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, as well as research funding from the National Science Foundation.