Participants

Maël Montévil is chargé de recherche in CNRS, in République des savoirs, USR 3608, École Normale Supérieure. He is a theoretical biologist working at the crossroad of experimental biology, mathematics, and philosophy. He developed the framework of constraints closure and theorized biological historicity and its implications for theory and modelization with which to study current issues such as endocrine disruptors and, more generally, anthropocene's disruptions and our response to them. Montévil is the author of more than twenty-five peer-reviewed articles and a monograph with Giuseppe Longo: Perspectives on organisms.

David S. Oderberg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, England and current Head of Department. He is the author of six books including Real Essentialism (2007) and The Metaphysics of Good and Evil (2020), as well as editing or co-editing several others in logic, metaphysics, and ethics, including Classifying Reality (2013). He is also the author of over seventy articles in metaphysics, philosophy of biology, ethics, philosophy of religion, and other subjects. In 2013 Professor Oderberg delivered the George Hourani Lectures at SUNY Buffalo. He also edits Ratio, an international journal of analytic philosophy, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK.

Arnaud Pocheville is a theoretical biologist and philosopher of science whose research concentrates on issues in evolutionary biology, including topics such as the structure of evolutionary time and the notion of biological information. His aim is to clarify current theoretical controversies (e.g. between niche construction theory and the extended phenotype perspective), such as by showing that the competing perspectives implicitly posit different hypotheses about the time-scale separability of the diverse biological phenomena they claim to consider (mostly development, ecology and evolution). He completed his PhD on the ecological niche concept at the laboratory Ecology and Evolution, École Normale Supérieure, Paris and held postdoctoral research positions in Theory and Methods in Biosciences group at the University of Sydney and at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. He is currently a permanent research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Dr. Gillian Roehrig is a professor of STEM Education at the University of Minnesota. She received her PhD in Science Education from the University of Arizona in 2002. Her research explores issues of professional development for K-12 science teachers, with a focus on implementation of integrated STEM learning environments and induction and mentoring of beginning secondary science teachers. Her work in integrated STEM explores teachers' conceptions and implementation of STEM, curriculum development, and student learning in small groups during STEM lessons. She has received over $50 million in federal and state grants and published over 130 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. She is a former president of the Association for Science Teacher Education and currently serves as president-elect of NARST. She is the recipient of the 2020 ASTE Outstanding Science Teacher Educator Award.

Jessica is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota, and the Kusske Design Initiative (KDI) Co-Principal for 2021–2023. KDI aims to connect individuals across design disciplines to co-create solutions to global issues through the lens of environmental stewardship, using dialogue, interdisciplinary inquiry, and collaboration as methods of inquiry. In her work, Jessica investigates new ways of adapting to future unknown conditions in extreme landscapes, with a focus on infrastructure, materiality, and ephemerality. She teaches in landscape construction, infrastructure and systems, advanced planning and design, digital representation, and graduate design studios.

Emilie Snell-Rood is an Associate Professor and Associate Head of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Emilie did her graduate work at the University of Arizona and a postdoc at Indiana University before starting at the University of Minnesota in 2011. Research in her lab asks why organisms vary in developmental and behavioral plasticity, and what this means for predicting responses to novel environments. She primarily uses butterflies as a study system, but also has experience working with beetles, bees, birds, and mammals. Emilie teaches Animal Behavior and a course on bio-inspired approaches to problem-solving. Her interests in bio-inspired design have led to a series of interdisciplinary collaborations developing educational modules for engineers and designers interested in looking to biodiversity for ideas in their own applications.