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Data for the People

Data for the People: Season 2

Register for episodes in season 2!

  • Episodes 1-4 will focus on primary scientific literature. Episode 5 is a Town Hall discussion to reflect on how our understandings of social behavior manifests in our daily lives.

Season 2 Details

After 18+ months of the COVID-19 pandemic, our entire world had to alter our own social behavior to reduce the spread of disease. While social distancing has proved incredibly helpful in stopping the spread of COVID-19, it has also caused many to re-evaluate the importance of social connections amongst humans, especially in times of crisis.

Luckily for us, humans aren’t the only organisms that rely on social connections. During this season of D4P, we will explore what social behavior means in non-human animals like flies, nematode worms, and ants. These organisms are capable of adapting their own social behaviors based on the environments that they are in. During this series we will wonder “What does it mean to be social?”, “What animals are capable of social behavior?”, and most importantly, “What can we learn from animals about social behavior?”

Coming up

March 23, 4pm – 5pm D4P:Social Behavior Town Hall. Join Lindsey, Chad, Taylor, and Sofia for a chance to chat and ask questions on how we can synthesize and scrutinize all that we learned from this series as it relates to human behavior.

Register for the D4P Townhall

Previous D4P: Social Behavior Events

Lindsey HeadshotJanuary 19, 4pm – 5pm “Immune challenges increase network centrality in a queenless ant,” presented by Lindsey Lopes, Graduate Fellow in the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior (Head of Lab: Daniel Kronauer). PDF.

Chad HeadshotFebruary 2, 4pm – 5pm “Social communication of predator-induced changes in Drosophila behavior and germ line physiology” presented by Chad Morton, Graduate Fellow in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Behavior (Head of Lab: Vanessa Ruta). PDF.

Taylor HeadshotFebruary 16, 4pm – 5pm “Colony expansions underlie the evolution of army ant mass raiding” presented by Taylor Hart, Graduate Fellow in the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior (Head of Lab: Daniel Kronauer). PDF

Sofia HeadshotMarch 9, 4pm – 5pm “Shared behavioral mechanisms underlie C. elegans aggregation and swarming” presented by Sofia Avritzer, Graduate Fellow in the Laboratory of Integrative Brain Function (Head of Lab: Gaby Maimon). PDF.

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About D4P

Everyone has a right to access primary scientific information and the opportunity to explore how science connects to our society.

Data for the People (D4P) is an interactive web-series that invites all people to engage with relevant scientific research topics, presented by scientists from our communities. Information is sourced directly from primary scientific literature and explored in a way that maintains the rigor of the research while eliminating inaccessible jargon. 

D4P sessions are presented by scientists who enroll in our D4P Fellowship program and work through a science communication and engagement training period that combines theory, practice, and direct feedback for iteration and skills development.

D4P is presented as a related collection of 3-5 live online events, occurring over a time span of 4-6 weeks, and comprise a themed season (i.e. COVID-19 or Food Science). Events are recorded and uploaded to YouTube as a D4P episode that can be accessed at any time in the future. Each season will culminate in a town hall-style event that demonstrates the ways in which a specific scientific theme can connect to our society. Registration for each D4P event is free and open to anyone who is interested in attending.

Catch up on previous seasons here. If you’d like to stay in the loop for future events, subscribe to our Data for the People newsletter