Biological and Environmental Sciences Colloquium Series

University of Rhode Island

The BES Colloquium Series is the research seminar series for the College of Environmental Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. BES students nominate speakers from across several disciplines including: Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB), Ecology and Ecosystem Science (EES), Environmental and Earth Sciences (EVES), Evolution and Marine Biology (EMB), and Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems (SAFS). Invited speakers spend the day at URI visiting with faculty and graduate students.

Seminars are intended for a general scientific audience but are free and open to all.

Fall 2025 Schedule

Time: 3:00 PM Location: CBLS 010

Click the Speaker’s Name and Talk Title for More Info

Date	Specialization	Speaker	Speaker’s Affiliation	Talk Title	Host
Sep 5	N/A	None		No talk because of BES Retreat	N/A
Sep 12	All	URI BES Grad Reps	URI	Spring 2025 Welcome Event!	N/A
Sep 19	EES	Dr. Amanda Rodewald	Cornell Lab of Ornithology	The intersection of participatory science and evidence-based conservation	Tori Mezebish Quinn
Sep 26	EMB	Dr. Brad Wetherbee	URI	What can we learn from highly mobile marine fishes?	Dr. Brad Wetherbee
Oct 3	EES	Dr. John Orrock	UW Madison	Linking individual rodent behavior to zoonotic disease risk	Katie Overstrum
Oct 10	EMB	Dr. Hollie Putnam	URI	Acclimatory and adaptive responses to climate change in complex life history corals	Dr. Hollie Putnam
Oct 17	SAFS	Dr. John Taylor	URI	Planning and Designing Urban Agriculture Through the Lens of Agroecolgogy	Sheriff Aliu
Oct 24	EES/EMB	Dr. Serena Moseman-Valtierra	URI	Paths to Productivity: Possibilities for coastal wetlands, bivalves, and undergrads in large lectures	Dr. Serena Moseman-Valtierra
Oct 31	SAFS	Dr. Nicole Tillquist	UConn	Maternal Nutrient Restriction Modulates Histological, Epigenetic, and Microbiome Characteristics in the Ovine Fetal Intestine	Hannah Piracini
Nov 7	EVES	Dr. Radley Horton	Columbia University	Assessing coastal impacts of weather and climate extremes	Raquel Pauly
Nov 14	EMB	Dr. Nichola Hill	UMass Boston	The Flu-ture is Now: How Natural and Human Worlds Collide to Shape a Global Avian Influenza Outbreak	Niel Bauer
Nov 21	EMB	Dr. Kate Castellano	UConn	Unlocking Marine Genomes: Insights into Evolution and Development from Marine Invertebrates	Dr. Jon Puritz
Nov 28	N/A	N/A	N/A	Thanksgiving Holiday
Dec 5	CMB	Dr. John Leong	Tufts University	Microbial tools to investigate age-driven defects in innate immune defense	Ellen Madden

Overview

The M.S. and Ph.D. in Biological and Environmental Sciences (BES) are interdisciplinary, interdepartmental graduate degrees with faculty from multiple departments in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS), including Biological Sciences; Cell and Molecular Biology; Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Science; Geosciences; Natural Resources Science; Nutrition and Food Sciences; and Plant Sciences; as well as faculty from the Graduate School of Oceanography.