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Rob Brooks

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Scientia Professor of Evolution, UNSW Sydney

I am an evolutionary biologist who thinks and writes about how evolved minds and cultures interact with the 21st-century world. That includes topics like obesity, population growth, income inequality, gender inequality, social media and artificial intelligence.

My research tends to be curiosity-driven, and my funding tends to come from fundamental research funding programs like the ARC‘s Discovery program. I am motivated to study evolution because of its power to help us understand both nature and the human condition.

My most recent book – Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers (2021) – considers what happens when technologies like AI and robotics interact with the social behaviours humans use to make friends, shore up alliances, grow intimate and fall in love. My first book – Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution has Shaped the Modern World – won the Queensland Literary Award for Science. That book and my other writing (including for The Conversation) and media appearances won me the 2013 Eureka Prize for Promoting the Understanding of Science.

Experience

  • –present
    Director, Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, University of New South Wales
  • 2009–present
    Australian Professorial Research Fellow, UNSW
  • 2005–2009
    ARC QEII Research Fellow, UNSW
  • 1997–2000
    Postdoctoral Fellow, James Cook University

Education

  • 1996 
    University of Witwatersrand, PhD/Evolutionary Ecology

Research Areas

  • Evolutionary Biology (0603)
  • Population, Ecological And Evolutionary Genetics (060411)
  • Behavioural Ecology (060201)
  • Psychology (1701)

Honours

Fenner Medal (2011) of the Australian Academy of Science; Eureka Prize for Science Communication (2013) ARC QEII and Professorial Fellowships