The Evolution Solution

SPEAKERS

Jennifer McElwain is an assistant curator of fossil plants at the Field Museum in Chicago. Her undergraduate degree was in botany at Trinity College, University of Dublin and Ph.D. in paleobotany at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Following post-doctoral research at the University of Sheffield, Dr. McElwain joined the Field Museum in 2000. Her research focuses on using fossil plants to reconstruct past climates and atmospheres as well as investigations into the role of atmospheric CO2, a potent greenhouse gas, in long-term patterns of plant ecology and evolution. Current fieldwork activities are focused in the Arctic Circle, East Greenland, California and central Utah.

Roy Caldwell is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. Though Roy’s early research centered on insect migration, now his interests lie in tropical marine invertebrate behavior and ecology. His current research is focused on the behavioral ecology of stomatopod crustaceans, a group of tropical marine predators commonly known as mantis shrimp. Two hundred million years ago stomatopods evolved a pair of enlarged raptorial feeding appendages that also serve as potent offensive and defensive weapons. Much of Roy’s research is concerned with how various aspects of stomatopod biology have coevolved with the development of these potentially lethal weapons. Roy received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1969.

David R. Lindberg is the director of the UC Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) and a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. His research interests focus on the evolution of select organisms (mostly Mollusca), and the resultant interactions between organisms and their habitats through time. He has done research and field work for more than 15 years along much of the eastern Pacific margin. Additionally, he is the Principal Investigator on three K–12 outreach projects at UCMP, focusing on the use of technology to increase access to scientific resources. He received a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Richard G. Klein is professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He focuses on the evolution of human behavior and ecology based on artifacts and animal remains found in ancient archaeological sites. He has done fieldwork in South Africa for more than 30 years and has just finished six years of excavation at a 300,000-year-old hand axe site near Cape Town. This coming year, he will be focusing on a 60,000-year-old shell midden that illuminates the behavior and ecology of near-modern Africans shortly before they expanded to Eurasia. His latest book is The Dawn of Human Culture (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2002).

Michael Botchan is a professor and division head of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the mechanisms and regulation of the initiation of DNA replication in eukaryotes and how this process is coupled to the cell cycle. He is particularly interested in how Drosophila chromosomes and Papilloma viral DNA can provide unique opportunities to learn about chromosomal dynamics. Dr. Botchan received his Ph.D. in biophysics from UCB and then proceeded to Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory and the State University of New York Stony Brook, New York before returning to Berkeley in 1980.

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