Meet Aditi Pai, Ph.D.

Biography

Faculty Member Since 2006

Aditi Pai, Ph.D., is the vice provost and chief of staff for Academic Affairs in the Office of the Provost and a professor of biology.

Current Grant Support
National Science Foundation GRANTED: "Center for Advancing Research Impact on Society Renewal”(co-PI)
$9,105,419, 2023-2028

Dr. Pai is an evolutionary biologist who earned her doctorate at New York University at Buffalo in 2001. Prior to studying at SUNY-Buffalo, she earned her master's degree in ecology at Pondicherry University (Pondicherry, India) and her bachelor's in chemistry, environmental science and zoology at St. Joseph’s College (Bangalore, India).

She joined the biology department at Spelman in 2006 and was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2011. Dr. Pai was promoted to full professor in 2020. As a biologist, she investigates questions on sexual selection and conflict using the flour beetles as a model system. As a science educator, she investigates the impact of innovative curriculum, instruction strategies, and assessment practices on student engagement and learning. Her work is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Pai was recognized for excellence in teaching in 1998 as a graduate student at SUNY-Buffalo and for excellence in research at Spelman College in 2009 and 2014. In 2018, the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia (Athens) selected her for the year-long Governor's Teaching Fellowship. In 2020, the Society for College Science Teaching awarded her the Outstanding Undergraduate Science Teaching Award (OUSTA).

She has served in several leadership positions on her campus, including vice chair of biology (2010-2013) and co-director of the HHMI program (2012-2016). She was appointed co-director of Spelman’s Teaching Resources and Research Center in 2014 and interim vice provost for faculty in 2021.

Education

• Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo
• M.S., Pondicherry University
• B.Sc., St. Joseph’s College

Courses Taught

• Bio 110: Biological communities and populations
• Bio 325: Evolution in action
• Bio 425: Ecology
• Bio 100: Biology of women
• Bio 285-485: Sophomore Senior seminar
• Bio 487: Research methods in evolution
• FYE 101-102: First Year Experience

Research Interests

My interests are in the general area of evolutionary biology and ecology and specifically in the area of behavioral ecology and host-parasite evolution.

Recent studies have shown a variety of ways in which a ‘battle of the sexes’ plays out between males and females of different species, and how each sex tries to manipulate the other to protect their own reproductive interests. My research uses the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) to study female multiple mating behavior and the conflict of interests between the sexes. The results of this research will yield insights into the evolution of reproductive biology and perhaps even speciation.

Select Publications

Zhong D., A. Pai and G.Yan. 2005. Costly resistance to parasitism: evidence from simultaneous quantitative trait loci mapping for resistance and fitness. "Genetics" 169: 2127-2135.

Pai, A., L. Bennett and G. Yan. 2005. Female multiple mating for fertility assurance in red flour beetles?"Canadian Journal of Zoology." 83: 913-919.