Andrew Allen is a Joint Professor of microbial oceanography and ecology between the Integrative Oceanography Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). He received his PhD in Ecology from the University of Georgia in 2002. After several years as a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France he joined the faculty at JCVI 2007. In 2013 he assumed a faculty position at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

His research interests include the development of new knowledge and new hypotheses related to gene function, biochemical pathways, ecophysiology and other genome-scale characteristics that typify and distinguish the major microeukaryotic phytoplankton lineages. Ongoing ecological and evolutionary genomics studies are aimed at investigation of biogeochemically relevant cellular features that influence the distribution and occurrence of major phytoplankton groups. Other current research interests in the Allen laboratory are related to eukaryotic phytoplankton interactions with bacteria and RNA viruses and associated cellular defense, resistance and interaction mechanisms. Together these studies seek to integrate physiological, bioinformatic, statistical, functional and comparative genomics strategies and data streams to elucidate the regulatory networks that regulate nutrient flux for the major lineages of marine eukaryotic phytoplankton.