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Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction

Nov 14 @ 5:00 pm-7:00 pm

Join the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation in welcoming Mary Ellen Hannibal as she discusses her new book, Citizen Scientist, over refreshments and hors d’oeuvres.

Register here!

book

Moderator: Jon Christensen, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Panelists: Lila Higgins, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and H. Bradley Shaffer, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA La Kretz Center

About the book

Here is a wide-ranging adventure in becoming a citizen scientist by an award-winning writer and environmental thought leader. As Mary Ellen Hannibal wades into tide pools, follows hawks, and scours mountains to collect data on threatened species, she discovers the power of a heroic cast of volunteers—and the makings of what may be our last, best hope in slowing an unprecedented mass extinction.

Digging deeply, Hannibal traces today’s tech-enabled citizen science movement to its roots: the centuries-long tradition of amateur observation by writers and naturalists. Prompted by her novelist father’s sudden death, she also examines her own past—and discovers a family legacy of looking closely at the world. With unbending zeal for protecting the planet, she then turns her gaze to the wealth of species left to fight for.

Combining original reporting, meticulous research, and memoir in impassioned prose, Citizen Scientist is a literary event, a blueprint for action, and the story of how one woman rescued herself from an odyssey of loss—with a new kind of science.

About the author

Mary Ellen Hannibal is a Bay Area journalist and author. Her new book, Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction is a literary, historic, scientific, and personal inquiry into the tech-enabled revolution changing our concept of what science is, who gets to do it, and what it is for. A Stanford Media Fellow, Hannibal is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the National Science Writers Association’s Science and Society Award. Her previous books include The Spine of the Continent. She has written for many publications including The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Nature, Nautilus, and High Country News.