Jenny Tung

Class of 2025-26

Director and founder
Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Jenny Tung, the founder of the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, has helped spearhead work to demonstrate how social environment influences gene regulation, population genetic structure and health and survival in nonhuman primates and other social mammals.

Her research unifies organismal perspectives on behavior, life history and evolution with molecular and genetic approaches that provide exciting new insights into long-standing questions in biology that were previously unattainable.

She received her Ph.D. from Duke University.

Tung is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, the Sloan Research Fellowship and is an NAS Kavli Fellow. Tung has been listed as one of Science News SN 10: Scientists to Watch. Additionally, she is the co-director of the Amboseli Baboon Research Project, which is internationally recognized as the gold standard for long-term studies of wild primates.

She has authored four book chapters and 100 peer-reviewed articles. She is an editor for “eLife,” “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B” and “Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health.”

Tung will collaborate with faculty and students in the College of Arts and Sciences.