Iowa City Darwin Day: Science Fest Events

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is a scientist and author. An Adjunct Assistant Professor at Rice University, she studies behavioral manipulation of animal hosts by their parasites. She has worked on systems including trematodes that infect the brains of fishes and wasps that control the behavior of other wasps – before eating them. Dr. Weinersmith and her partner, the cartoonist Zach Weinersmith, coauthored the New York Times bestselling book Soonish.

Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and a visiting research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. He uses experimental evolution, mathematical modeling, and computational biology to better understand the underlying causes and consequences of disease. He is a recipient of the UNCF-Merck, the Broad Institute Diversity Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Dr. Shamar Chin is an Assistant Professor right here at the University of Iowa Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Dr. Chin is a paleontologist, specializing in nanofossils, which she uses to understand climatological and ecological histories.