Distinguished Explorer Award Dinner

The Roy Chapman Andrews Society is proud to present Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton, RCAS Distinguished Explorer 2024.
Keynote Lecture:
ANIMAL ADAPTATIONS TO A HUMAN-DOMINATED WORLD
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Each year since 2003 the Distinguished Explorer Award event connects local youth and adults to today’s leading explorers through interactive visits from world-renowned explorers to our community. This spring, the Society will host the 21st DEA Event and will celebrate one of today’s modern explorers, Dr. Shane Campbell Staton.
This free event will be held on Friday, April 19, 2024 at 4:30 PM at Beloit College’s Wilson Theater inside Mayer Hall. The celebratory fundraising dinner will immediately follow at the Beloit College Powerhouse. Tickets for the dinner are available online at www.roychapmanandrewssociety.org

Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton is an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He holds a BSc in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. from Harvard. Before joining Princeton, he was a National Science Foundation Research Fellow at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and then an assistant professor at UCLA in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, working in the Institute for Society and Genetics.

Dr. Campbell-Staton’s research focuses on how humans, technology, and politics influence the evolutions of species. In his work, he seeks to identify genes and traits that allow animals to rapidly adapt to new environmental pressures. His recent research projects include the consequences of the increasing frequency of tuskless elephants in the Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, how lizard are adapting to increased heat and artificial structures across Puerto Rico, the adaptation of wolves around Chernobly to generations of radiation exposure, and reproductive adaptations in American alligators in Lake Apopka, Florida to high levels of toxins.