I am a social scientist based at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Cambridge Public Health, University of Cambridge, and am interested in how insights from the evolutionary sciences can help to solve pressing issues like health inequality and the erosion of trust in society.
My work draws on a diverse body of research, ranging from anthropology and biology to ethics and public health, which I believe apply effectively to major societal problems like inequality.
My work has appeared in media outlets including the Financial Times, The Guardian, Nature, Scientific American, and New Scientist, and I have been interviewed about my work for radio shows, podcasts, and publications across the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, and Australia.
Tom Zeller Jr. is an American journalist, former New York Times reporter and columnist, and current editor in chief of the digital science magazine Undark. His debut book, The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Condition (HarperCollins/Mariner in July, 2025), is part memoir, part scientific whodunnit, and ultimately the author's quest for the origins of his own headaches. Along the way, it becomes a journey into the inner workings of the human nervous system and an illuminating look at the nature of pain itself. At times harrowing, and at others, hilarious, the book has been heralded as "required reading for anyone with a head." (—Mary Roach)
Tom was born in northeastern Ohio, studying English and Political Science at Cleveland Stat
