Richard E. Lenski (born August 13, 1956) is an American evolutionary biologist. He holds the office Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbial ecology at Michigan State University. In 1996 Lenski won a MacArthur Fellowship (a so-called "genius award"). In 2006, he was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences Lenski is best known for his long-term E. coli evolution experiment, and his work with digital organisms, using Avida. Richard Lenski is the son of sociologist Gerhard Lenski.
