Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences ESA Early Career Fellow Corina Tarniţă is a Romanian-American mathematician and theoretical biologist known for her work in mathematical biology and complex adaptive systems.

She is currently a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Princeton University.

[2] Born in Romania, Tarnita showed an early aptitude for mathematics, encouraged by her mother, a professor of materials science and engineering.

[5] Tarnita's 2010 paper, "The evolution of eusociality," co-authored with Martin A. Nowak and Edward O. Wilson, challenged the long-standing kin selection theory and proposed a new model for the evolution of eusociality, sparking significant debate and reevaluation in the field of evolutionary biology.

[9] Working with Princeton colleagues Robert Pringle and Juan Bonachela, Tarnita developed new theories about the formation of large, regular vegetation patterns, such as fairy circles in the Namib Desert.