Outreach
Presenting on how ornithologists use specimens to study evolution and ecology as a featured scientist for the Field Museum's "Meet a Scientist" in July 2025.
I am deeply passionate about science and committed to sharing that enthusiasm with students and the public through education and outreach. A central focus of my outreach is communicating how natural history collections generate new scientific insights and why they remain essential to understanding biodiversity and evolution.
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One avenue for this work has been collaboration with museum exhibition teams. An NSF DEB proposal I co-wrote during my PhD on the speciation dynamics of Pacific island kingfishers also supported the development of a temporary exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History’s Grainger Science Hub. This installation (June–December 2025) connected our genomic research on kingfishers with broader concepts of speciation and the genetic adaptations required for plunge diving, translating cutting-edge research into an accessible public narrative.
Beyond exhibitions, I place strong value on direct, in-person engagement with museum visitors. The Grainger Science Hub is explicitly designed to facilitate dialogue around collections, and during a single week in July 2025 I spoke with approximately 2,000 Field Museum visitors about kingfisher evolution as a visiting scientist in the Hub. At the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, I have engaged with hundreds of K–12 students during Collections Revealedevents, discussing how birds produce feather colors and how scientists study them. Additional outreach at NHMLAC has included demonstrating bird specimen preparation during the members-only Haunted Museum event and speaking with visitors at Dino Fest (∼6,000 attendees) about Archaeopteryx and the evolution of birds.
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During my PhD, I also participated in semi-annual open house events at the Museum of Southwestern Biology, which lacks permanent public-facing exhibits. At the 2023 event Evolution Revealed: Specimens Behind the Species, I demonstrated how scientists use UV spectrophotometry to measure feather coloration and investigate its evolution. While large annual events provide valuable opportunities for public engagement, I also prioritize smaller, sustained outreach efforts. I regularly visit local elementary and high school classrooms to discuss biodiversity science and pathways into research careers; this work directly led to my mentorship of a local Albuquerque student on her senior capstone project focused on skeletal specimen preparation.​​
In addition to teaching the UNM BioBlog course and maintaining the blog site during my PhD, I contributed my own blogs. Here are some of my favorites:
My research has additionally received significant media attention, providing further opportunities to communicate the value of natural history collections to a broad audience. In 2020, I authored a popular science article for the American Birding Association, “The data behind mysterious bird deaths in New Mexico,” which examined a large avian mortality event in Colorado and New Mexico. By comparing recent mortalities with historical museum records, I was able to demonstrate that starvation—rather than wildfire smoke from California—was the most likely cause. This work resulted in interviews with 15 media outlets, including the Albuquerque Journal, Denver Post, New York Times, NPR, and CBS Saturday Morning. Similarly, when I published evidence supporting the recognition of a new avian family, Eurocephalidae, I used museum study skins during a local television interview to illustrate convergent evolution.
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Finally, I view outreach as inseparable from training the next generation of scientists to communicate effectively. For six years, I served as instructor of record for the University of New Mexico BioBlog, a scientific communication course designed to teach undergraduate and graduate students how to translate complex research for general audiences. During my tenure, BioBlog received more than 100,000 page views. One memorable outcome of this work was when one of my own course articles, “Predatory Songbirds: the case of the murderous tits,” was shared on social media by Richard Dawkins in 2020—an unexpected but gratifying example of how accessible science writing can reach wide audiences.
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Predatory Songbirds: the case of the murderous tits
the lengths birds will go in the face of scarcity
Crabs, birds, and blue blood
how shorebirds and humans depend on a living fossil
Will history repeat itself?
two stories of declining bird populations, then & now