Michael Sorenson is the Interim Associate Dean of the Faculty, Natural Sciences and a professor of biology.

His research focuses on the behavioral and evolutionary ecology and population genetics/genomics of brood parasitic birds (species that reproduce only by parsitizing the parental care behavior of other species). Recent work has focused on comparative genomic analyses of the evolution of brood parasitism, including the loss of parental care, and the genomic consequences of host specific adaptation in several different groups of brood parasitic birds, work that intersects with the evolution of sex chromosomes and mitonuclear coevolution. Recent work also includes genomic analyses of speciation and adaptation in the brood parasitic indigobirds (Vidua spp.) of Africa, in which learning and mimicry of host songs facilitates an evolutionary process of speciation by host shift, and in a group of 12 Lonchura munia species in Papua New Guinea and northern Australia that represent an extraordinary example of rapid evolutionary diversification.