Galápagos

Pamela Yeh is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. A native Angeleno, she did her undergrad at Harvard, her graduate work at UCSD, a postdoc at Harvard and her first faculty position in Oregon before finally returning to Los Angeles. Her research focuses on how populations evolve in novel environments, and she conducts work in both the field and the lab. In the field, she examines bird populations in urban and native habitats, with the goal of understanding how birds may be evolving differently in urban areas compared to native environments. In the lab, she examines how bacteria populations evolve in a range of drug combinations, with the ultimate goal of using evolutionary processes and phenomena to develop strategies to combat multi-drug resistant pathogens. Pamela directs UCLA’s Evolutionary Medicine program, as well as the UC-Historically Black Colleges and Universities Pathways to PhDs: Ecological and Evolutionary Medicine program. In addition, she is actively involved in both public outreach for STEM education as well as in community-engaged research in the Los Angeles community. Pamela’s research has taken her to all seven continents, and dozens of countries and locales, including places such as Nepal, Sweden, Antarctica, and one of her favorites, the Galapagos Islands. She has been a regular faculty lecturer for UCLA Bruin Woods and enjoys talking to Bruin alumni about her research as well as all sorts of topics related to science and society.