Jeffrey Townsend earned a Sc.B. with Honors in Biology from Brown University in 1994 and a Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 2002. He is now the Elihu Professor of Biostatistics at Yale University, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and the Co-Leader of the Program in Genetics, Genomics, and Epigenetics at the Yale Cancer Center. His research in cancer research has led to numerous publications, presentations, and extramural seminars as well as membership in the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. He has received several awards and honors, including the Reducing Disease Risk Research Award from Yale School of Public Health in 2023 and the Translational Research Prize from Yale Cancer Center in 2016. Dr. Townsend's research interests include the somatic evolution of cancer and the development of resistance to cancer therapies, the genetic origins of metastases, and the role of mutational processes in cancer development. His work has been instrumental in revealing how endogenous and exogenous factors contribute to cancer mutations and in identifying molecular signatures for various cancers, including lung and head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, along with diverse other topics in the fields of biostatistics, evolutionary biology, and cancer research.