Athena Aktipis is a cooperation theorist who works on the evolution of social behavior and human vulnerability to disease. At Arizona State University, she is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, an associate professor of psychology and a member of the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University. Her work includes the evolution of social behavior including human cooperation, looking at cancer as a problem of cellular cheating, and examining how cooperation and conflict shape our relationships with our microbiomes. Aktipis is the host of the science podcast Zombified and the author of two books: ‘The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer’ and 'A Field Guide to the Apocalypse: A Mostly Serious Guide to Surviving Our Wild Times." She is also the Founding Director of The Cooperative Futures Institute, a public benefit corporation with the goal of building a more cooperative future for America.
