2018 University Lecture
Diversity and Plasticity of Life: A Biologist’s Journey from Embryo Self-Defense to Sexual Behavior
Presented by Karen Warkentin, Professor of Biology and Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at 7 p.m.
Tsai Performance Center
685 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts
Admission is free. The public is cordially invited.
Dr. Karen Warkentin has been a Professor of Biology at Boston University since 2001, a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), in Panama, since 2004, and a Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at BU since 2011. She grew up in Kenya and Canada, did her BSc at the University of Guelph, MSc at Dalhousie University, PhD at the University of Texas, Austin, and postdoctoral studies at the University of Kentucky and STRI. She has studied Neotropical frogs since 1991, working in Costa Rica and Panama, with more recent collaborations in Colombia and Ecuador; during the field season, she coordinates the Gamboa Frog Group. Her research focuses on phenotypic plasticity and integrative biology of embryos and tadpoles, and on hatching as a critical transition point and embryo self-defense strategy. She also studies how animals use vibrations as an information source.
Prof. Warkentin works across disciplines, collaborating with engineers and computer scientists in her vibrations research and with humanists and social scientists in her teaching. She helped develop BU’s Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program and is a member of the BU Gender + Sexuality Studies Group. She brings a biological perspective to gender & sexuality studies, and a feminist and queer perspective to biology, and is increasingly asked to combine these approaches in her presentations.
She has published 60 scientific papers and given, or mentored students to give, over 200 conference presentations and seminars, including many plenaries and symposium talks, in English and Spanish. She served as an editor of Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology and on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. She has organized symposia on Environmentally Cued Hatching Across Taxa and on Diversity, Plasticity, and the Science of Sexuality. She worked in public environmental education for eight years before starting graduate school and is committed to making her work accessible. Her team’s research has often been featured in the media, including Boston Globe, Discover Magazine, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, New York Times, Science News, Scientific American, David Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood and NPR’s Science Friday, and a social media video viewed 2.8 million times.
Watch the lecture: