Beth Shapiro is an American evolutionary molecular biologist. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Shapiro's work has centered on the analysis of ancient DNA. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009.

Shapiro was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and grew up in Rome, Georgia, where she served as the local news anchor while still in high school. She graduated from the University of Georgia in 1999 with both a B.A. and an M.A. in ecology. The same year she was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and in 2003 Shapiro received a D.Phil. in biology from Oxford University.

Shapiro became a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at Oxford in 2004. Also in 2004 she was appointed director of the Henry Wellcome Biomolecules Centre at Oxford, a position she held until 2007. In 2006 she was awarded a University Research Fellowship by the Royal Society. While at the Biomolecules Centre, Shapiro carried out mitochondrial DNA analysis of the dodo.

Shapiro has written on ecology for a number of journals including Science, Molecular Biology and Evolution and PLoS Biology. In 2007, she was named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of 37 young American innovators under the age of 36.

Professors, Ecology, National geographic, Molecular biologist, Biologists, Culture, Biology