AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center Silver Spring, MD
Sean B. Carroll
Author, "The Serengeti Rules"; Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Endowed Chair of Biology, University of Maryland; Vice President for Science Education, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Serengeti Rules— Top-down ecology
Program Description
Award-winning biologist and author Sean B. Carroll answers questions about keystone species and the top-down theory of ecology described in his book (and the film) The Serengeti Rules.
Presented At
AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center Silver Spring, MD
Film Synopsis
A band of young scientists discovers a radical new theory of the natural world, one that could help confront some of the biggest environmental challenges of our time.
Beginning in the 1960s, a handful of young scientists headed out into the wilderness, driven to understand how nature works. Immersed in some of the most remote and spectacular places on Earth—from the majestic Serengeti to the Amazon jungle, and from the Arctic Ocean to Pacific tide pools—they discovered a single set of rules that govern life: The Serengeti Rules. Now in the twilight of their eminent careers, these five unsung heroes of modern ecology share their adventures, reveal how their pioneering work flips our view of nature on its head, and give us a chance to reimagine the world as it could and should be.
About the Speaker
Sean B. Carroll is an award-winning scientist, author, educator, and film producer. He leads the Department of Science Education of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the largest private supporter of science education activities in the US, is the executive director of HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and is the Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Endowed Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland. He is also Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin.
An internationally-recognized evolutionary biologist, Carroll's laboratory research has centered on the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. In recognition of his scientific contributions, Carroll has received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences, been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and elected an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.
A prominent science communicator in print, on radio, and on television, Carroll is the author of The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters (Princeton University Press); Brave Genius: A Scientist, A Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize (Crown, Random House); Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, which was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award for non-fiction (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); The Making of the Fittest (2006, W.W. Norton); and Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo (2005, W.W. Norton). He also wrote the regular feature "Remarkable Creatures" for the New York Times Science Times. For his many literary contributions, Sean received Rockefeller University's Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing About Science in 2016.
Carroll has served as executive producer or executive in charge of several feature documentary films or series including The Farthest (2017), Amazon Adventure (2017), The Lucky Specials (2017), Spillover: Zika, Ebola & Beyond (2016), Mass Extinction: Life at the Brink (2014) and Your Inner Fish (2014), as well as approximately twenty short films which have garnered him various awards, including one Emmy and two Emmy nominations.
Carroll is also author of the student texts The Story of Life (2018, W.W. Norton and Co.), Into The Jungle: Great Adventures in the Search for Evolution (2008, Pearson, Benjamin Cummings), co-author with Jen Grenier and Scott Weatherbee of the textbook From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design (2nd ed, 2005; Blackwell Scientific), and with Anthony Griffiths, Susan Wessler, and John Doebley of the textbook Introduction to Genetic Analysis (10e, 2011, W.H. Freeman and Co.).
For his educational contributions, Carroll has received the Stephen Jay Gould Prize for the advancement of the public understanding of evolution from the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Distinguished Service Award of the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the Viktor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Award from the Society for Developmental Biology. and numerous honorary lectureships. Carroll was named one of America's most promising leaders under 40 by TIME Magazine in 1994.
He earned his B.A. in Biology at Washington University in St. Louis (1979), his Ph.D. in Immunology at Tufts Medical School (1983), and carried out his postdoctoral research with Dr. Matthew Scott at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He has received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Minnesota (2009) and from Tufts University (2017).