Todd Oakley is an evolutionary biologist and professor in the EEMB Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He has a PhD from Duke University and a BS and MS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was an NIH-NRSA postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, and was the recipient of an NSF-CAREER Award and the Ernst Mayr Award.

His research focuses on the evolutionary origins of complex features, like eyes and nervous systems, especially in marine invertebrates, including cnidarians, arthropods, and mollusks.