Read about Hopi Hoekstra net worth, age, husband, children, height, family, parents, salary and career as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Hopi Hoekstra is an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and serving as the Dean of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her lab uses natural populations of rodents to study the genetic basis of adaptation.
She is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. She is also the Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and a Harvard College Professor.
In 2014, Hoekstra became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. In 2016, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2017, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hoekstra assumed the deanship of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in August 2023.
Early life
| Name | Hopi Hoekstra |
| Net Worth | $3 million |
| Occupation | Biologist |
| Age | 51 years |
| Height | 1.70m |
Danielle “Hopi” Elizabeth Hoekstra was born on July 11, 1972 (age 51 years) into a family of Dutch ancestry. Her first name “Hopi” is derived from a Dutch term of endearment. Hoekstra attended a high school near Palo Alto, California. She chose to attend college at the University of California, Berkeley, where she initially intended to study political science.
Hoekstra chose the university because she wanted to play volleyball, which she did for two years. She has stated that at one point she wanted to become the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, but she was drawn in to biology by a class on biomechanics taught by Robert J. Full. She went on to work in Full’s lab, studying cockroach locomotion.
Career
Hopi Hoekstra received her B.A. in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. Before her graduate studies, she researched grizzly bears for a year in Yellowstone National Park. She obtained her Ph.D. in Zoology as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington.
Hoekstra studied the genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice at the University of Arizona for her postdoctoral work. In 2003, she became an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. In 2007, she moved to Harvard University, where she received tenure in 2010.
She is a member of the advisory board for Current Biology. In June 2023, she was named the Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, succeeding Claudine Gay, who had assumed the University’s presidency a month prior. Hoekstra assumed office on August 1, 2023.
Hoekstra is best known for studying the genetic mechanisms that influence the evolution of highly complex natural behaviors. In 2013, Hoekstra published an article in the journal Nature on the genetics of burrowing behavior in two sister species of Peromyscus mice; the oldfield mouse (P. polionotus), which builds elaborate burrows complete with an escape tunnel, and the deer mouse (P. maniculatis), which builds a simple and shallow nest.
Using a combination of behavioral assays and classical genetic strategies, Hoekstra and her students identified four regions of DNA that control the length of the tunnels dug by the mice. Students in her lab have also studied the connections between digging behavior and the neurobiology of reward.
She has also studied the evolution of the color of mice coats and its significance for adaptation. In 2013, her team published an article in the journal Science, describing how coat color in mice was controlled by nine separate mutations within a single gene, named “agouti.”
Speaking about this discovery, Hoekstra said, “The question has always been whether evolution is dominated by these big leaps or smaller steps. When we first implicated the agouti gene, we could have stopped there and concluded that evolution takes these big steps as only one major gene was involved, but that would have been wrong”.
She also stated, “When we looked more closely, within this gene, we found that even within this single locus, there are, in fact, many small steps.” Her work supports the hypothesis that evolution can occur through incremental changes.
Hoekstra has found evidence linking the mutation of the Agouti gene to survival in mice. The study showed how a sequence variant in the Agouti gene changes the phenotype and then linked those changes to changes in population allele frequency, demonstrating the evolution of traits by natural selection.
Husband
Is Hopi Hoekstra married? Hopi Hoekstra is a married woman. Her husband is James Mallet who also works as an evolutionary biolog ist at Harvard. As of 2023, She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her son and husband.
Hopi Hoekstra net worth
How much is Hopi Hoekstra worth? Hopi Hoekstra’s net worth is estimated at around $3 million. Her main source of income is from her primary work as an evolutionary biologist. Hopi Hoekstra’s salary per month and other career earnings are over $358,000 dollars annually. Her remarkable achievements have earned her some luxurious lifestyles and some fancy car trips. She is one of the richest and most influential evolutionary biologists in the United States. She stands at an appealing height of 1.68m and has a good body weight which suits her personality.