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Jay Phelan

Jay Phelan teaches biology at UCLA, where he has taught introductory biology in large lectures for majors and nonmajors for twelve years. He received his PhD in evolutionary biology from Harvard in 1995, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Yale and UCLA. His primary area of research is evolutionary genetics, and his original research has been published in Evolution, Experimental Gerontology, and the Journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology, among others. His research has been featured on Nightline, CNN, the BBC, and NPR; in Science Times and Elle; and in more than a hundred newspapers. He is the recipient of more than a dozen teaching awards.  With Terry Burnham, Jay is the coauthor of the international best-seller Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food—Taming Our Primal Instincts. Written for the general reader, Mean Genes explains in simple terms how knowledge of the genetic basis of human nature can empower individuals to lead more satisfying lives. Writing for a nonscientific audience has honed Phelan’s writing style to one that is casual and inviting to students but also scientifically precise.

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Jay Phelan

Jay Phelan teaches biology at UCLA, where he has taught introductory biology in large lectures for majors and non-majors for twelve years. He received his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Harvard in 1995, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Yale and UCLA. His primary area of research is evolutionary genetics, and his original research has been published in Evolution, Experimental Gerontology, and the Journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology, among others. His research has been featured on Nightline, CNN, the BBC, and National Public Radio; in Science Times and Elle; and in more than a hundred newspapers. He is the recipient of more than a dozen teaching awards.  With Terry Burnham, Jay is the co-author of the international best-seller Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food—Taming Our Primal Instincts. Written for the general reader, Mean Genes explains in simple terms how knowledge of the genetic basis of human nature can empower individuals to lead more satisfying lives. Writing for a non-scientific audience has honed Jay’s writing style to one that is casual and inviting to students, but also scientifically precise.

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Benjamin A. Pierce

Benjamin Pierce received a B.S. in Biology from Southern Methodist University and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. Ben is currently Professor of Biology and holder of the Lillian Nelson Pratt Chair at Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX. He is a population geneticist who conducts ecological and evolutionary research on amphibians. Ben has authored a number of articles in research journals and several books, including: The Family Genetics Sourcebook, a guide to genetics for the layperson; Genetics: A Conceptual Approach, a general genetics textbook; Genetics Essentials: Concepts and Connections, a brief genetics textbook; and Transmission and Population Genetics: A Short Course, a textbook for courses in transmission and population genetics.  Ben is a member of the steering committee of the 21st Century Science Coalition, a group of scientists who support strong science standards for Texas public schools. He is the President of the Texas Academy of Science, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, and is a Fellow of the Texas Academy of Science. He currently serves on the editorial board of Bioscience. He has received research and teaching grants from the Natural Science Foundation, the W. M. Keck Foundation, the 3M Foundation, the National Park Service, the Williamson County Conservation Foundation, and the National Geographic Society.

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Naomi Pierce

Naomi Pierce is the Hessel Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, and Curator of Lepidoptera in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. She teaches and studies animal behavior and behavioral ecology. Her lab focuses on the ecology of species interactions, such as insect-host plant associations, and on the life history evolution and systematics of Lepidoptera. She has also been involved in reconstructing the evolutionary “tree of life” of insects such as ants, bees, butterflies.

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Bernard W. Pipkin

Dr. Bernard Pipkin, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. He has authored three books and many professional papers in environmental geology, received the AA award for teaching excellence and hosted the Emmy-winning series, Oceanus.

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Hidde Ploegh

Hidde Ploegh is Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. One of the world’s leading researchers in immune system behavior, Dr. Ploegh studies the various tactics that viruses employ to evade our immune responses, and the ways in which our immune system distinguishes friend from foe. Dr. Ploegh teaches immunology to undergraduate students at Harvard University and MIT.

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James M. Postma

Dr. James Postma is a physical chemist at California State University, Chico.  He received his Ph.D. from UC Davis in 1982, studying electrochemistry with Dr. Peter Rock to evaluate the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation.  He joined the faculty at CSU, Chico in 1982 and teaches courses in physical and analytical chemistry as well as general chemistry courses.  He is the co-author of General Chemistry in the Laboratory, 7th edition, a widely-used laboratory textbook in freshman chemistry classes.  He is the chair-elect of the California Section of the American Chemical Society and is currently the Chair of the Academic Senate of the California State University system.  He has been a member of the California Science Project Advisory Board since 1995 and has chaired the Board since 2000.

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Frank Press

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Patricia L. Price

Patricia L. Price is associate professor of geography at Florida International University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Washington. Connecting the long-standing theme of humanistic scholarship in geography to more recent critical approaches best describes her ongoing intellectual project. From her initial field research in Mexico, she has extended her focus to the border between Mexico and the United States and, most recently, to south Florida as a borderland of sorts. Recent field research is on comparative ethnic neighborhoods, conducted with colleagues and graduate students in Phoenix, Chicago, and Miami, and funded by the National Science Foundation. She is using this work to discuss the Latinos/as, neighborhood change, civic engagement, immigrant and exile landscapes, and critical geographies of race. Price is the author of Dry Place: Landscapes of Belonging and Exclusion (2004) and coeditor (with Tim Oakes) of The Cultural Geography Reader (2008).

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Mary V. Price

Mary V. Price is Professor of Biology, Emerita, at the University of California, Riverside and Adjunct Professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona. In “retirement,” she continues to teach and study, having learned the joy and art of scientific discovery as an undergraduate student at Vassar College and doctoral student at the University of Arizona. Dr. Price has mentored and published with independent-research students and has developed and taught general biology and ecology courses from introductory (majors and nonmajors) to graduate levels. She has particularly enjoyed leading field classes in the arid regions of North America and Australia, and the tropical forests of Central America, Africa, and Madagascar. Dr. Price’s research focuses on understanding the ecology of North American deserts and mountains. She has asked why so many desert rodents can coexist, how best to conserve endangered kangaroo rat species, how pollinators and herbivores influence floral evolution and plant population dynamics, and how climate change affects ecological systems.

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Donald R. Prothero

Donald R. Prothero is Professor of Geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences from Columbia University. Prothero is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of 22 books and over 200 scientific papers.  He is on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine, and has served as an associate or technical editor for Geology, Paleobiology, and Journal of Paleontology.  He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, the Paleontology Society, and the Linnaean Society of London, and has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Science Foundation.  In 1991, he received the Schuchert Award from the Paleontology Society for the outstanding paleontologist under the age of 40.  He has been featured on several television documentaries, including Paleoworld and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.

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Alex Pulsipher

Alex A. Pulsipher is an independent scholar in Knoxville, TN, focusing on urban development, sustainability, and global environmental change.  In the early 1990s, Alex spent some time in South Asia working for a development research center and then went on to do an undergraduate thesis on the history of Hindu nationalism at Wesleyan University.  Beginning in 1995, Alex worked full time on the research and writing of the first edition of World Regional Geography.  In 1999 and 2000, he traveled to South America, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, where he collected information for the second edition of World Regional Geography and for the website.  In 2000 and 2001, he returned to writing material and designing maps for the second edition.  In 2010, he earned a masters degree in Geography from Clark University, where he studied the diffusion of green technologies in the context of environmental change.

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Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher

Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher is a cultural-historical geographer who studies the landscapes of ordinary people through the lens of geography. She has contributed to several geography-related exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., including "Seeds of Change," which featured her research in the eastern Caribbean on human adaptation to the Neo-troics in the post-Columbian period, including the present. She and her graduate students have also looked at cultural geography and national/ethnic identity issues in the new Central European members of the European Union, and at the impact of tourism development on traditional landscapes in these countries. In January, 2009, Dr. Pulsipher was awarded the Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award, by the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, for work on the cultural and environmental geography of the Eastern Caribbean and Latin America, and public outreach through collaborations with the Smithsonian Institution and the Seeds of Change exhibit.

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Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher

Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher is a cultural-historical geographer who studies the landscapes of ordinary people through the lens of geography. She has contributed to several geography-related exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., including "Seeds of Change," which featured her research in the eastern Caribbean on human adaptation to the Neo-troics in the post-Columbian period, including the present. She and her graduate students have also looked at cultural geography and national/ethnic identity issues in the new Central European members of the European Union, and at the impact of tourism development on traditional landscapes in these countries. In January, 2009, Dr. Pulsipher was awarded the Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award, by the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, for work on the cultural and environmental geography of the Eastern Caribbean and Latin America, and public outreach through collaborations with the Smithsonian Institution and the Seeds of Change exhibit.

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Jenni Punt

Jennifer Punt has been a Professor of Biology at Haverford College since 1996. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, who majored in Biology at Haverford College, she attended a combined VMD/PhD (immunology) program at the University of Pennsylvania before doing her post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Alfred Singer at the National Institutes of Health. She has received numerous teaching awards at Haverford College, as well as the American Association of Immunologist Distinguished Service Award for teaching and helping to develop their Introductory Course Curriculum. She performs research with her undergraduate students on thymocyte and immature blood cell fate decisions

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