A somewhat convoluted path brought Allen Collins to the National Systematics Lab of NOAA's Fisheries Service and the Invertebrate Zoology department of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. His first professional experience conducting research was as an economist, a job he took after getting a bachelors degree in Mathematics and Economics from Amherst College. Eventually a night course put him on the path to becoming an evolutionary biologist, eventually leading him to obtain a PhD at the University of California Berkeley. Allen’s research focuses on the evolutionary history of relatively simple animals -- cnidarians, (jellyfishes, corals, etc.), placozoans (aka Trichoplax), and sponges. He generates and uses evolutionary trees (phylogenetic hypotheses) to better understand how the amazing biodiversity of these groups (in terms of morphology, life history, and genetics) has come to be.