About Rob Dunn

Rob Dunn is a biologist and writer in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. Central to all of his work is the sense that big discoveries lurk not only in faraway tropical forests, but also in our backyards and even bedrooms. The unknown is large and wonderful and Dunn and his collaborators, students, and postdocs love to spend their days in it.

Never Home Alone:

A Gala of Stories, Foods,and Insights from the Study of the Life in Homes  November 15th, 2018 (Evening) Beginning ten years ago scientists at North [...]

By |2018-08-25T12:16:35-04:00August 20th, 2018|

Students Discover Update

Overview: Over the last five years we have worked to develop citizen science projects that reach out to the public but also that, more specifically, [...]

By |2017-11-29T14:13:22-05:00November 28th, 2017|

Calling All Drones

On Monday, October 9th, Greg Crutsinger woke to an ordinary sort of day. He was looking forward to the week. He was launching a [...]

By |2017-10-27T17:14:41-04:00October 26th, 2017|

The Search for Lost Microbes

I spent several years writing a book about the value of biological diversity to agriculture, Never Out of Season. In doing so, I gained a [...]

By |2017-09-25T09:51:40-04:00September 25th, 2017|

Ten Things Graduate Students Should Study (Never Out of Season Edition)

One of the luxuries of writing about science is that it gives me a chance to weave together discoveries made in disparate fields. I can connect the stories for readers. Sometimes I can even connect the scientists themselves. But the more I write, the more that I see that where such connections are most conspicuously missed is not random. In some subfields of science our ignorance is both vast and predictable. One of these subfields is the intersection between basic ecology and evolutionary biology and application.

By |2017-03-06T14:44:53-05:00March 6th, 2017|

We have Sitophilus as pets

Attention students! If you have published a paper in which you have studied the natural history of a pest, a paper you think is elegant, transformative, or just cool, you can enter it here to win a prize of $500. This money is for students only, though if you are a faculty member and have done interesting work on the natural history of pests we want to hear from you too (you just won’t get any money). And, if you have some money you want to donate, in order to support students doing this important work, work that has so long gone undone, you can donate here.

By |2017-06-26T14:26:23-04:00February 20th, 2017|

The Syrians and Iraqis at Your Dinner Table

Each detail of our daily lives has a history and, just as with any history, it is a history we would do well to learn from. Consider the biology of your dinner table. Your table itself is Syrian or Iraqi as is most of the food on it.

By |2017-06-26T14:28:31-04:00January 28th, 2017|

A Letter to the New Students of Vassar

[Rob has been invited to Vassar to talk to the entering class of students about his book The Wild Life of Our Bodies, but also [...]

By |2016-11-22T13:46:43-05:00July 24th, 2016|

Announcement: 6 to 100 Hires in Public Science

[Positions listed at the end of this post] By the time the potato murrain arrived in Ireland scholars had already begun to explain its cause: a blight, a water mold. [...]

By |2016-11-22T13:46:43-05:00September 24th, 2015|
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