Andrew McAdam

Andrew McAdam is associate dean for research and graduate studies within the Division of Natural Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is also a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He has been a member of the CU Boulder faculty since 2020. 

As a faculty member, McAdam studies how ecology affects short-term evolutionary changes in wild populations. Much of his lab’s research has been part of a collaborative study that has tracked more than 25,000 red squirrels in the Yukon Territory of Canada over the past 37 years (www.redsquirrel.ca). This long-term study allows McAdam and his team to study how this population is coping with and evolving in response to changes in their environment. Social interactions between family members and neighbors often have important consequences for individuals and their Darwinian fitness, so his lab is currently interested in the way these social interactions influence adaptation in nature. 

He was chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology for four years.  In 2025-26, he served on the Natural Sciences Strategic Planning Steering Committee and was chair of the Natural Sciences Council. Although much of McAdam’s field research has been in northern Canada, his team recently began studying the importance of kangaroo rats to the creation of a new species of prairie sunflower in Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.