Like many universities and learned societies around the world, the University of Alabama at Birmingham hosts Darwin Day events on or around 12 February each year. The UAB Darwin Day and celebration of science dates back to 2013 and we’ve had speakers from Joe Palca to Briana Pobiner.
Usually events happen live and in person – each lab presents a poster on the latest research highlighting the students and post-docs giving us a chance to showcase what we’ve been doing to the local community. In 2020, we were able to have our regular Darwin Day events just before everyone went into lockdown.
2021 is a bit different …
There is no way to have face-to-face events so the Darwin Day Committee had to have a re-think this past autumn as to how to hold the event – it typically draws from the wider Birmingham community.
We decided to have a virtual Zoom panel with some of the UAB professors and doctors that have been at the forefront of the response to the COVID-19 Pandemic – you might recognize some of them from CNN. As Dan Bolnick recently highlighted about conferences in the ‘after times’, one silver lining (can we say that?) of this whole sorry affair is that we can do some things virtually. Not only does this provide an opportunity to enable increased attendance in our own backyard, but also from much further afield. If that works for conferences (no travel costs, etc. to attend a meeting), then why can’t it work for a public-facing event?
Without further ado …
On behalf of the Darwin Day Committee at UAB, we’d love for some Molecular Ecologist readers to join us this Friday 12 February at 12pm CST to hear how one medical research university has responded to the on-going pandemic.
Each of our speakers will talk about different aspects of COVID-19 research and response followed by a Q&A.
If you’re interested in attending you can also go this link and use the passcode provided.
We wish everyone a happy Darwin Day and hope that we can find a few things to celebrate in these very trying times!