Mitch Cruzan is a Professor of Biology at Portland State University. He received his BA and MA from California State University, Fullerton, and his PhD from SUNY, Stony Brook, and served as a post-doc at the University of Toronto and The University of Georgia. His first faculty position was at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and he has been a faculty member at Portland State since 2002. He teaches upper-division courses including Evolution, Evolutionary Genomics, Conservation Genetics, Plant Reproduction, and Plant Evolutionary Biology. In his research he utilizes ecological and molecular genetic and genomic techniques to address questions in plant ecology and evolutionary biology. His research includes the evolutionary consequences of mutation accumulation in plants, as well as studies on plant reproduction, hybridization, invasive species, phylogeography, and dispersal. He is a Senior Editor for a leading journal in his field (Molecular Ecology). He is the author on more than 80 scientific publications, an advanced text book titled Evolutionary Biology – A Plant Perspective (Oxford University Press), and has written a popular science book on human evolution titled Looking Down the Tree – The Evolutionary Biology of Human Origins (2025, Oxford University Press).