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Andrew Swafford is an evolutionary cell biologist interested in how sensory and motor systems originate, evolve, and diversify. His research spans organismal and molecular levels of organization—tracing the evolutionary trajectories of how animals and fungi perceive, process, and respond to their environment. To do so, his lab develops new bioinformatic and molecular techniques in non-model systems to answer evolutionary questions that delve hundreds of millions of years into the histories of animals and fungi with particular focus on pathogenic chytrid fungi. These early diverging fungal groups remain poorly understood despite their ability to ‘see’ and ‘smell’ in their unicellular life stage, which guides their movement while they explore the environment looking for a place (or a host!) to settle and grow.