Adriana Briscoe

Adriana Darielle Mejia Briscoe is an American evolutionary biologist born in Hawaii and raised in Colton, California, in a family of Mexican American teachers, who is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her research on sensory physiology, color vision and molecular evolution has shown how photoreceptor proteins called opsins in butterfly retinas co-evolve with wing coloration at the molecular level. She earned degrees in philosophy and biological sciences from Stanford University and a doctorate from Harvard University under Naomi Pierce and Richard Lewontin, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2024 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022, alongside a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021.