Nicole Thompson González is a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary primatologist in the Department of Anthropology. Her work draws from evolutionary biology, animal behavior, sociology, and public health to examine the multiple links between sociality, health, and biological fitness in human and non-human primates. Her work on wild primates in East Africa provides models of the social and developmental drivers of health inequalities from the individual to the population level, by pairing long-term behavioral and ecological data with biomarkers of health status. Further, her work centers life history theory as a framework to evaluate the costs and benefits of social relationships and community dynamics throughout the life course. She currently manages the Biobehavioral Health Laboratory at UCSB, performing and overseeing several assay techniques. Her current research focuses on immune regulation as a powerful pathway by which individuals embody social experience.