Robert Page, ESA Fellow (2012)

[img_assist|nid=18836|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=150|height=200]Dr. Robert Page, university provost at Arizona State University, was elected Fellow in 2007.  He studies the evolution of complex social behavior in honey bees from genes to societies.

Dr. Page was born in Bakersfield, CA on 12 November 1949.  He received his B.S. in entomology from San Jose State University in January 1976 and entered a graduate program at the University of California-Davis where he received his Ph.D. in entomology in March 1981.  He did postdoctoral training at the USDA Honey Bee Research Laboratory in Madison, WI and then was appointed assistant professor of entomology at The Ohio State University in January 1986.  In June 1989 he returned to UC-Davis to join the entomology faculty as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 1991.  He served as chair of the Department of Entomology, UC-Davis, from October 1999–May 2004.

In 2004, Dr. Page moved to Arizona State University to be the founding director of the new School of Life Sciences.  He took this opportunity to build a Social Insect Research Group that is now recognized worldwide.  In July 2011 he became vice provost and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and December 2013 became university provost, where he still serves. 

Dr. Page was trained as an entomologist, evolutionary population geneticist, classical animal breeder, and mechanistic behaviorist.  This training has defined his research approach of looking at the genetics and evolution of complex social behavior.  He has taken a vertical approach to understanding the mechanisms of honey bee social foraging and how it evolves.  His work is contained in more than 225 research articles.  He has also co-edited three books and authored or co-authored two. 

Dr. Page is an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) highly-cited author in plant and animal science.  He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Leopoldina German National Academy of Science, and the Brazilian Academy of Science.  In 1995 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize by the government of Germany.  Dr. Page is married to Michele and has two children Jennifer and Brian.

(updated February 10, 2014)