Joel Brown, Ph.D., is a world leader in applying principles of ecology and evolution to contain and cure cancer, while enhancing the length and quality of patients’ lives. He is an evolutionary ecologist with over 350 peer-reviewed publications and a leader in mathematical modeling of ecological and evolutionary dynamics. 

Childhood experiences in Zimbabwe created a love of nature and animals that grew into an academic career. For 30 years, his laboratory and graduate students have worked from A to Z, from aardvarks to zebras, with a particular love for squirrels. He now applies evolutionary game theory to define, understand, model and develop improved treatment strategies for cancer. These models see cancer as the evolution of a new, single-celled species. The tumor becomes an ecosystem within which the cancer cells exhibit both ecological and evolutionary dynamics as they compete for space and resources, form associations and further speciate to fill the niches that emerge from heterogeneity within the tumor. His contributions and interests in dormancy range from seed dormancy in desert annual plants to dormancy in cancer. 

Brown is a Senior Member of the Department of Integrated Mathematical Oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida. He is also a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago.