Joseph L. Graves Jr. is an American evolutionary biologist and geneticist. He is a professor of biological science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and a former associate dean for research at the Joint School for Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, which is jointly administered by North Carolina A & T State University and UNC Greensboro. His past research has included an examination of the evolution and physiological performance in Drosophila, a genus of small flies often called fruit flies. His work includes the genomics of adaptation, as well as the response of bacteria to metallic nanoparticles. A particular application of this research has been to the evolutionary theory of aging.