Science Under the Dome

Join us for our Science Under the Dome monthly live talk series. Talks in this series are presented by graduate student and postdoc researchers at CU Boulder.

(Normally, these events are a part of our regular talks and normal ticket prices apply. Groupons can be used. CU Boulder students are admitted FREE with valid BuffOne card. Tickets must be picked up in person and only one ticket per student.)

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Science and Society series

Science and technology don’t exist in a vacuum - there are countless ways that research and innovation play a significant role in society at large. What are some of the ways in which they overlap? This series explores the intersection of science and society, addressing topics such as light pollution, GMOs, and mining asteroids, and the talks invite the audience to consider ways in which they have been impacted by this intersection.

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UPCOMING TALK - BUY TICKETS

Whale Talk: Animal Communication and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

FEBRUARY 16 at 7PM

CU Boulder students are admitted FREE with valid BuffOne card.

For a long time, scientists have been interested in deciphering whale and dolphin communication. From “The Order of The Dolphin,” to SETI’s (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) creation, to today's quest for decoding nonhuman animals' syntaxes, we get closer every day to translating their languages. Due to human impacts, like climate change, we find ourselves in a race to learn as much as we can about nonhuman animal communication to help aid the protection of the ocean. In this talk, we will go to the depths of the ocean to discover how whale communication is being studied, the human impacts they are facing, and how their communication can aid the search for extraterrestrial life and conservation on Earth.

Joanne Marras Tate (she/her) (B.Sc., B.Sc., M.Sc.) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is a Communication scholar and multimedia producer interested in humanature communication practices and their cultural understandings. Her research interests include environmental communication, human-animal studies, science communication and public engagement of science, Indigenous studies, ethnography, discourse, governance, ocean science, and conservation. She is currently working on her dissertation which focuses on humanature relations during COVID-19 lockdowns in Brazil, Australia, United States, and Japan. If you are wondering what humanature means, it is a discursive play on the expected dichotomy of human-nature. By combining the words, I follow other scholars in acknowledging that we are part of, and inseparable from nature.

Science of Sci-Fi series

From warp drives to artificial intelligence to living on Mars, this series is to explore a variety of scientific ideas that surface in science fiction books, movies, and video games. Where have popular sci-fi movies portrayed science correctly, and where has Hollywood gone off the deep end? What technologies were once ‘sci-fi’ but are now rapidly becoming a reality?

PAST TALK

From Ents to Audrey II: How do Plants Actually Communicate?

JANUARY 26 at 7PM

CU Boulder students are admitted FREE with valid BuffOne card.

From Ents to Audrey II, plants have been depicted talking for years in modern science-fiction and have been talking for a millennia if we include ancient mythology. However, plant communication is not science-fiction and while your potted basil plant will never ask you about your career plans, it is still able, through its own means, to send messages to us, other plants, microbes, or nonhuman animals. Join us in finding out how plants talk and what they are talking about.

Capucine Baubin is a postdoctoral researcher at CU at the Barger and the Fieres labs working on the smell of rain and the potential impacts of its components on the soil environment and all its inhabitants. She is originally from France but has done her education in Ecology all over the world. Apart from lab and field work, she enjoys singing, cooking, and exploring the neighboring grasses with her cute puppy, Tao.

Climate Change in Our Backyard series

Our climate is changing and we must adapt to a world that is transforming right before our eyes. Early warning signs of climate change were seen in far away places like the Arctic, Antarctica, and Greenland. Now these impacts are affecting us here at home and changing the way we live our lives. Join us as we explore the local and global impacts of climate change and ways in which we can contribute to a solution.

Photo of fire burning on a hill in San Francisco

PAST VIRTUAL TALK

Fires, Flooding, Heat Waves, Drought: Extreme Events in a Changing Climate

WATCH the recorded talk on our YouTube channel.

Join us to explore the link between extreme weather and climate change. Wildfires in the west have broken records and affected air quality across much of the country. There have been so many storms that the National Hurricane Center has run out of names for the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. Has climate change actually contributed to these events? Are they becoming more frequent? Heat waves, droughts, floods, and even cold snaps. We'll talk about the mechanisms through which these events can be influenced by climate change and what we can expect to see in the future.

Erika Schreiber received her bachelor's degree in Science of Earth Systems from Cornell University in 2012, her Master's in Geography from the University of Delaware in 2015, and recently defended her Ph.D. in Geography at CU Boulder. Her Ph.D. research focused on how storms in the Arctic impact sea ice, and how climate change is affecting that relationship. She is now working at UNAVCO as a Polar Engineer, facilitating studies of Antarctic glaciers.

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