UMass Amherst’s Life Science Café Makes Science Accessible to Everyone

AMHERST, Mass. – Life Science Café, a monthly event that strives to make science accessible and informative to people of all ages, ends their spring series with their first-ever Spanish language event on Zoom Thursday, May 26 at 6 p.m. Live English translation also will be available. The event is open to the public.

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The hour-long event will feature the research of Laura Figueroa, a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research in Biology Fellow. Figueroa will discuss bee ecology beyond their role as important pollinators. She is currently researching how pathogens are transmitted between bees through shared use of flowers and how to evaluate factors that contribute to pollinator health and develop strategies to promote bee conservation. Figueroa also has studied “vulture bees,” a little-known tropical species that have evolved an extra tooth for biting flesh and hosts a gut microbiome that more closely resembles that of carrion-loving birds than their pollen eating bee relatives. Registration for the online event is free.

Founded in 2011 by a group of University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate students, Life Science Café invites a local science expert to have a conversation with a graduate student host about their area of expertise. The Café, which pivoted to an online format during the COVID-19 pandemic, includes multiple audience question-and-answer sessions. The organizers’ goal is to make the science behind the research being discussed accessible to a general audience of all ages. Additionally, Life Science Cafe is expecting to resume in-person events in August at different locations around the Amherst area. 

Future Life Science Café events will be announced soon. For more information about Life Science Café, including a link to join its mailing list to receive notice of upcoming events, visit its website at https://oebsciencecafe.org/ or follow them on social media: Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @lifesciecafe