Nels Elde '91: MacArthur Fellow Class of 2020 [Video]

Congratulations to Nels Elde '91 a 2020 MacArthur Fellow! Elde is an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Utah. 

"The potential impacts of Elde’s work are wide-ranging, from better understanding of host switching (where the pathogen moves from vertebrate animals to humans) to identifying druggable targets in bacteria and viruses as treatment for emerging infectious diseases." MacArthur Foundation

"The evolutionary record consists mostly of the unseen and unknown—countless lives and lineages now gone," notes Elde. "When Mozart was a child, he survived smallpox, but what if he didn’t make it? What about all the ones who didn’t make it? Could there have been some kind of super Mozart among them and, if so, what did her music sound like?"

Photo and video: © John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation- used with permission.