Splash Biography

Have you ever wondered how a single cell makes an entirely functional adult organism? Where do your brain, bones, and heart come from? In this class, we’ll address these questions by discovering fundamental principles of developmental biology. We’ll look at prepared microscope slides of chick embryos to visualize these ideas ourselves, and extend these ideas to provide insight into our own development. Come learn about the beautiful processes of development!

Have you ever wondered how conjoined twins come to be? Or whether the accounts of babies with tails or gills are really true? Can you be born with all of your organs in different places inside your body? The answer to these, and many other, fascinating questions lies in embryology, the study of how organisms develop as embryos. In this class, we’ll discuss fringe embryological cases, like the famous dipygus Myrtle Corbin, and what they reveal to us about the biological processes behind how we go from being a fertilized egg to a fully formed person.

What do designer babies, the catching of the golden state killer, and the strawberries in your fridge all have in common? They’ve all been influenced by our discoveries in the field of genetics! This seminar series will provide an introduction to modern genetics, followed by our exploration of the far reaching consequences of its research, including applications in medicine, agriculture, and law. Finally, we’ll discuss genetics and science fiction--and what may not be fiction in the future.

Have you ever wondered what’s really going on in the minds of our closest relatives? How different (or similar!) is their social cognition from ours? This class will go over some unique behavioral experiments that give us some insight on how primates perceive and communicate with one another. Let’s talk about what we think other primates think!