Nerd Nite went back to Spirit January 23rd with our first of many themed nights! All three speakers for this one were from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Event went great for our 5th sold out show! Speakers were. Soon (or now!) you can see these talks and others on our youtube channel.
1) Matt Lamanna is the dinosaur paleontologist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He’s been fascinated by dinosaurs since he was four, and not much has changed, mentally speaking. Presenting: Stupid Shit in Jurassic Park
2) Dr. Chase Mendenhall is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist with degrees from the University of Wyoming and Stanford University. Mendenhall’s research emphasizes the role cooperation plays in the natural world to create cells, build bodies, and determine behaviors that challenge traditional narratives of what it means to be an individual, a male, a female, or part of a family or group. Using novel mathematical frameworks, Mendenhall incorporates altruism and cooperation into existing theories of natural selection. His research uses cooperative behavior birds evolve to successfully raise offspring to empirically test hypotheses. Presenting: Sex Ed
3) Jen Sheridan, PhD, is a tropical community ecologist and curator of amphibians & reptiles at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Sheridan’s superpowers are being able to identify a Simpsons episode applicable to any situation in life, and almost never getting bitten by mosquitoes (which is very handy in her field work). While trekking for hours over rough terrain in Borneo to count frogs, she often asks herself what business a kid from Detroit has being out there… Presenting: Frogs: who are they, and what are they doing here?