2025 Juanita Greer White Lecture Series

2025 Juanita Greer White Lecture Series

UNLV School of Life Sciences invites you to the 2025 White Lecture, which is free and open to the public. It will be delivered by Dr. Michael Purugganan of New York University. The lecture will be one hour in duration with a reception following immediately after.

Topic: Bread, Wine and Genes: Domestication and the Evolution of the Food Species We Eat

Michael Purugganan is a Silver Professor of Biology at New York University, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, among other affiliations. His work focuses on plant evolutionary genomics, especially the evolutionary genomics of crops.

Domesticated species are a cornerstone of modern human civilization, providing the food resources for human societies. Domesticated crops are also a model to understand the nature of evolution, a point made by Darwin who noted that “a careful study of domesticated animals and cultivated plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem”. Using food species as diverse as rice and date palm, we will explore recent work on domesticated crops that combine genomics, archaeology and evolutionary biology, and our changing understanding of how domestication occurs, how crop species evolve, and indeed about how evolution proceeds.

About the White Lecture

The Juanita Greer White Distinguished Lecturer Series honors Dr. Juanita Greer White (1905-1997) for her contributions in science and the advancement of higher education in Nevada.

Parking

The nearest parking lots to the Science & Engineering Building (SEB) are the Cottage Grove Parking Garage and UNLV Lot O. Attendees should plan to arrive 15-20 minutes prior to the scheduled start time.

Host or Publisher UNLV School of Life Sciences