Lectures on Tap - "What Jellyfish Can Teach Us About Human Biology"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "What Jellyfish Can Teach Us About Human Biology"

🎤 Speaker: Dr. Jocelyn Malamy

Dive into a fascinating evening exploring what our distant jellyfish cousins can reveal about the human body. Though they may seem simple, jellyfish hold powerful clues to essential biological processes that shape our own health and development.

Dr. Jocelyn Malamy, an Associate Professor in the Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology Department at the University of Chicago, will share how studying jellyfish stinging is helping scientists understand the workings of inner ear hair cells in animals, including humans. She’ll also explore how the jellyfish’s remarkable capacity for rapid wound healing is shedding light on how our own tissues repair themselves.

In addition, Dr. Malamy will discuss how genes in ancient animals like jellyfish have been conserved over evolutionary time and re-purposed to build new structures and behaviors in more complex animals. Originally a plant biologist, she became captivated by jellyfish research a decade ago and now leads a team investigating epithelial wound healing and development in the jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.