Darrin T. Schultz

Scientist and naturalist. I explore the world to understand the origins of animals and unique life on Earth.
Born in the US in the Midwest, undergraduate at Oberlin College, Fulbright fellow in Japan.
Completed my PhD at UC Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Postdoc at the University of Vienna.
Currently I am a postdoc at Stanford University School of Medicine and will teach/research as a professor at Lehigh University and Lehigh Oceans starting in July 2026.
I am a hobbyist scuba diver, photographer, and learn languages for fun and cultural exchange. Currently I am re-reading the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Science

I am a researcher bridging chromosome-scale genomics, evolutionary biology, and molecular technology development.
You can find my list of publications here: Google Scholar
Our work has included tracing chromosomal changes to detangle early events in animal history and understand the deep branch points in the animal tree: Nature 2023, characterizing how animal chromosomes changed over their 1-billion year history bioRxiv 2024, and uncovering the unique chromosome biology of the Pacific sea gooseberry comb jellyfish: G3 2021.
I assembled the first chromosome-scale genomes of ctenophores (H. californensis and B. microptera), of three close relatives of animals (scaffolding existing assemblies), and of marine sponges (a carnivorous + bioluminescent sponge, as well as a a glass sponge). With co-authors I assembled chromosome-scale genomes of a cnidarian (Nanomia septata), an octopus (Octopus vulgaris), leeches, symbiotic tubeworm bacteria, a fish (Dascyllus trimaculatus), and a copepod (Acartia tonsa).
Our work also looks at the evolution and function of bioluminescence. We identified the world's first (bioluminescent sponge) and how it glows, and a novel bioluminescence system of a marine polychaete worm (Odontosyllis undecimdonta).

Learn more about our work on the origin of animals via the New York Times, The Guardian, Science, Nature, Scientific American, and or Smithsonian Magazine. For more information about our work on comb jellyfish genomics, see The Scientist and the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

I am a programmer and focus on developing software for comparative genomics and data visualization.
Follow me here on Github and contribute with a pull request!
My 'oxford dot plots' package simplifies chromosome-scale inter-species comparisons, ancestral linkage group reconstruction, and phylogenetic tools for resolving species quartets.