My current research interests center on the biology of aging. In particular, I am interested in the response of lifespan to dietary restriction. Feeding animals less food makes them live longer. I would like to know why this works, both in a physiological, mechanistic sense and in an evolutionary sense. I use the small nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism to study these questions.

I have also worked in the areas of population and community ecology. In particular, I have used planktonic rotifers as model systems to investigate factors that affect species diversity.