A Day for Darwin

Next February 12th will be the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of Darwin's Birthday. Queens College will be celebrating the occasion with a symposium and panel discussion on Friday February 13th in the LeFrak Concert Hall beginning at 9AM.

This event is free and open to the public. If you are in the New York area, swing on by!

Speakers include:

Susan Foster
Dr. Foster is a Professor of Biology and the Warren Litsky Endowed Chair in Biology at Clark University, the President-Elect of the Animal Behavior Society, and editor of the books The Evolutionary Biology of the Threespine Stickleback (with Michael Bell) and Geographic Variation in Behavior: Perspectives on Evolutionary Mechanisms (with John Endler). Dr. Foster's research focuses the evolution of reproductive and antipredator behavior, color, morphology, and life history following the post-glacial adaptive radiation of the threespine stickleback fish.

Jeffrey Schwartz
Dr. Schwartz is a Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and President of the World Academy of Art and Science. Dr. Schwartz's books include The Red Ape: Orangutans and Human Origins, What the Bones Tell Us, and Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species. As a systematist working with skeletal biology and dentition, Dr. Schwartz is interested in the research and theory underpinning our understanding of the origin and significance of morphological novelty.

Paul Turner
Dr. Turner is an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and Chair of the American Society for Microbiology’s Division R. Dr. Turner is the recipient of the Top Ten Emerging Scholars Award from Diverse Issues in Higher Education and a Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. He is interested in the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases and the use of laboratory populations of microbes as models to address these topics.


Patricia Wittkopp
Dr. Wittkopp is an Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan and a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award, and a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. She is interested in understanding the genetic basis of development, evolution and disease, with an emphasis on the molecular mechanisms controlling gene expression. Her laboratory uses the Drosophila pigmentation as a model system for understanding the genetic basis of phenotypic evolution.