This year’s Byrnes Lecture features Mandë Holford, Ph.D., and a presentation titled “Oceans (and the Creatures in Them) Are Our Future.”

Nature is one of our greatest sources of inspiration for solving some of the world’s biggest challenges in medicine, engineering, conservation, and technology. By studying the incredible diversity of life on Earth, scientists have made groundbreaking discoveries, including gene-editing tools like CRISPR, new treatments for diabetes and obesity, and glowing proteins that have revolutionized medical research. These are just a few examples of how learning from nature has changed our lives.

This lecture features Mandë Holford, Ph.D., Professor and Curator Harvard University/Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Anne Welsh McNulty Chair of Science Innovation and Leadership, and Research Associate, The American Museum of Natural History, CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Holford will highlight how venomous marine animals are inspiring the next generation of scientific and medical breakthroughs, and how these discoveries are changing the way we think about the connection between people and the natural world.