Sean B. Carroll

Sean B. Carroll is an American evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator, and executive producer. He is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland and emeritus of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His studies focus on the evolution of cis-regulatory elements in regulating gene expression in biological development, using Drosophila as a model system.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society (2007), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for Advancement of Science. In addition, he is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Carroll has received the Shaw Scientist Award from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, the Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, and the Lewis Thomas Prize at Rockefeller University.

Carroll is at the forefront of evolutionary developmental biology (also called "evo-devo"), studying how gene changes to control the evolution of body parts and patterns. He is the Allan Wilson Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

In 1987, Carroll set up a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison "focused on understanding how genes get used in different ways to generate the diversity of form that we see." The Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology lists Carroll's interests as "Genetic control of body pattern in fruit flies, butterflies, and other animals." In a series of papers, Carroll's team has shown how the activation of genes during the embryonic stages of the Drosophila fruit fly controls the development of its wings. The team has been searching for the butterfly's counterparts of these genes.

In 2010, he was named vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2011, the HHMI launched a documentary film initiative to produce science features for television, to which Carroll was appointed as one of the executive producers. In 2012, one such film, called The Day the Mesozoic Died, retracing the investigation that led to the discovery of the asteroid collision that triggered the mass extinction at the end of that Era, was introduced by Carroll at a National Teacher's Conference.

Carroll is a proponent of extended evolutionary synthesis. Since 2013, Carroll has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education. From September 2009 to March 2013, he wrote a column for The New York Times called "Remarkable Creatures," where he discussed findings in animal evolution.

In 1989, he received the Shaw Scientist Award from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. In 2010, Carroll received the Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution. In 2012, he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science from the Franklin Institute "for proposing and demonstrating that the diversity and multiplicity of animal life are largely due to the different ways that the same genes are regulated rather than to mutation of the genes themselves." In 2016, he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize at Rockefeller University.