Sir Run Run Shaw Lecture
2025 Series
Fall 2025 Lectures
Shinnecock Kelp Farmers:
Danielle Hopson Begun
Donna Collins-Smith
Rebecca Genia
"From Seaweed to Sovereignty: Shinnecock Kelp Farmers and Indigenous-Led Climate Solutions"
Monday, October 20, 2025 | 12:30 pm - 1:50 pm
Staller Center for the Arts, Recital Hall
For the Shinnecock people, seaweed has long been used as insulation for homes, an
ingredient in medicine, food for people and livestock, and a fertilizer.
In this talk, three members of the Shinnecock
Kelp Farmers collective will speak about their collaborations with scientists, climate
organizations, and local communities to revive and adapt these traditions despite
environmental damage caused by overdevelopment and pollution.
Co-sponsored by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, Humanities
Institute, Department of Art, Collaborative for the Earth, School of Marine and Atmospheric
Sciences, and Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery.
Sarah E. Reisman
Bren Professorof Chemistry, Division of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering
California Institute of Technology
"Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Natural Products and the Chemistry they Inspire"
Friday, November 14, 2025
Presented by the Department of Chemistry
Spring 2025 Lectures
Jimena Canales
Vice-Chairperson
American Council of Learned Societies
"As our Scientific Understanding of Time Changes, Does Time Change Too?"
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 | 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Harriman Hall Room 137
The progress of science throughout the last centuries has increased our ability to
measure time with increased precision. In 2023, the Nobel Prize committee marked an
important milestone in this trajectory by awarding the prize in physics to researchers
who had created a new technology to study nature in attoseconds.
It is also a milestone in the widening breach between reality determined via scientific measurements and that perceived via our senses. What is the role of the humanities in studying these accomplishments? This talk will explore the possibility of introducing a new concept of time to bridge the divide between scientific and intuitive understandings of nature.
Jimena Canales is an author and historian of science. Her books include Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science (Cosmos Prize 2022), The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time (Best Science Books, Science Friday and NPR, Top Reads The Independent, The Tablet Books of the Year) and A Tenth of a Second: A History (The Guardian’s Top 10 Books About Time). Her essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Artforum, Aperture, Nautilus and WIRED as well as in numerous scholarly journals. She was previously Assistant and Associate Professor at Harvard University and the Thomas M. Siebel professor for the History of Science at the University of Illinois.
Shelley Minteer
Professor, Department of Chemistry
Director, Kummer Institute Center for Resource Sustainability
Missouri University of Science and Technology
"Bioelectrocatalysis for Electrosynthesis"
Monday, April 7, 2025 | 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Wang Center Lecture Hall 2
In the last five years, there have been extensive studies and new materials designed
for interfacing biocatalysts with electrode surfaces for applications in energy storage
and electrification of the chemical industry. This talk will discuss electroanalytical
techniques for studying biocatalysis, including both mediated enzymatic bioelectrocatalysis
and direct enzymatic bioelectrocatalysis.
Dr. Shelley Minteer is a professor of chemistry and the director of the Kummer Institute Center for Resource Sustainability at Missouri University of Science and Technology. She is also the director of the NSF Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry.
She received her PhD in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Iowa, and her research interests are focused on electrocatalysis and bioanalytical electrochemistry.
Dr. Minteer has published more than 450 publications and has given more than 550 presentations at national and international conferences and universities. She has won several awards including the Luigi Galvani Prize of the Bioelectrochemical Society, International Society of Electrochemistry Tajima Prize and Bioelectrochemistry Prize, Grahame Award of the Electrochemical Society, Fellow of the Electrochemical Society and the International Society of Electrochemistry, American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Electrochemistry, and the Society of Electroanalytical Chemists’ Young Investigator Award and Reilley Award.