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

C. Brandon Ogbunu
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 Award, the Broad Institute Diversity Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Kelly Weinersmith
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.
Schedule of Events
April 8th and 9th, 2022
(all events free and open to the public)
Friday, April 8
3:30 pm | Welcome to Zombieland: Real Tales of Parasites Manipulating Host Behavior. |
Dr. Kelly Weinersmith, Rice University | 101 Biology Building East |
4:30 pm | The New Tangled Bank: How Ecologies and Interactions Drive Evolution, from Word Games to Proteins. |
Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University | 101 Biology Building East |
7:30 pm | Picture a Scientist (movie). |
FilmScene at the Chauncey |
Saturday, April 9
10:00 am | Are Tiny Ancient Algae the Canaries of our Oceans? |
Dr. Shamar Chin, University of Iowa | MacBride Auditorium |
10:45 am | Living, Loving, and Landscapes: How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Navigate it All. |
Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University | MacBride Auditorium |
11:30 am | Dangerous, Smelly, and Covered in Dirt: The Future of Humans in Space. |
Dr. Kelly Weinersmith, Rice University | MacBride Auditorium |