Michael Lynch is Regents Professor and the Director of the Biodesign Center for Mechanisms of Evolution, Arizona State University, where he also heads an NSF-funded Biological Integration Institute focused on the cellular mechanisms of evolution. His research has long focused on the genetic mechanisms of evolution, particularly at the genomic and cellular levels. Current research foci include: the evolution of replication, transcription, and translation error rates; the consequences of genome duplication; the 5000 Daphnia genomes project; global patterns of genomic and cellular diversity in ciliates and volvocales; and the mechanisms driving biology’s scaling relationships. All of this empirical work integrates with population-genetic theory development. He has held prior faculty positions at the University of Illinois, University of Oregon, and Indiana University. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is also past president of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, the Genetics Society of America, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the American Genetics Association. Recent awards include the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal from the Genetics Society of America and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. He is the author of four books: Genetics and Analysis of Quantitative Traits (with Bruce Walsh, 1998), The Origins of Genome Complexity (2007), Evolution and Selection of Quantitative Traits (with Bruce Walsh, 2018), and Evolutionary Cell Biology: the Origins of Cellular Architecture (2024).