ESP Biography



WILL BARR, MIT Biology Ph.D. student in David Page's lab




Major: Biology (Course 7)

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: G

Picture of Will Barr

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I am a third-year MIT Biology Ph.D. student working in David Page's lab at the Whitehead Institute, which has studied the evolution of sex chromosomes for more than 30 years. Prior to coming to MIT, I worked at the Rockefeller University in Paul Cohen's lab and studied how we might be able to uncouple obesity and disease. I did my undergrad education at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and was also in a research lab there! My first research experience was studying how the ribosome--life's oldest molecular machine--works in atomic detail. Outside of science, I love to engage with the visual arts, specifically photography. I grew up in Port St. Lucie, Florida and so love the outdoors, which formed my initial desire to study the natural world.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

S15056: The Evolution of Sex in HSSP Summer 2022 (Jul. 09, 2022)
Throughout almost all standard classes in biology, we are taught about sex in a human-centric way that often sidelines how sex itself has evolved over billions of years. Our course will reverse classical thinking about sex and examine how we got to the relatively recent evolutionary innovation of sex chromosomes. We will also discuss how an evolutionary perspective of biological sex may affect medicine and society.