IRiS Ignite: A Biennial Expo & Festival of Sensing

Ed Yong is a British-American investigative science journalist and one of the most influential voices in contemporary science communication.

His work connects curiosity about biological life—including microbes and animal behavior—with broader challenges in public science education and global health. He is the author of I Contain Multitudes (2016), which examines how microbial shaped animal biology, and An Immense World (2022), which presents a comparative overview of sensory systems across species, highlighting how animals perceive their environments in ways that differ from human experience. Yong is a former staff writer for The Atlantic, and has been recognized for his humor and ability to communicate complex scientific ideas to broad audiences. His books have been included twice in The Best American Science and Nature Writing series, and his work has greatly contributed to public understanding of both fundamental biology and science as a social practice. His coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic led to him being awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2021.

In his lecture, The Amazing Nature of Animal Senses, based on his book, An Immense World, Yong takes audiences through the hidden realms of animal senses. With wit and humor, learn the amazing ways in which animals perceive aspects of the world to which we are oblivious, and how appreciating the natural world leads us to better understand empathy

Suzanne Boyce is a Professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department and Adjunct Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Cincinnati. She received A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in Linguistics and is a licensed speech pathologist. She did postdocs in Engineering at M.I.T. and Boston University, and in Speech-Language Pathology at Emerson College. Her teaching mostly centers on getting students to understand the science of how people produce speech and how they perceive it. Dr. Boyce has been continuously funded by NIH and NSF since 1995. Research topics include: (1) modeling how speech sounds—that is, vowels and consonants--are made in the vocal tract, (2) using ultrasound to teach better speech production in children, (3) measuring articulatory precision, and (4) deriving patterns of articulatory movement from acoustics. A major focus has been on children who can’t say “RRR” as in “wabbit” for “rabbit”. Most recently, she has teamed with colleagues from DAAP, BME, Otolaryngology, and RENS to develop technology for using ultrasound to gamify feedback in speech therapy and swallowing. 

                                                                                                    She will give a lecture on Turning Ultrasound into Games for Speech                                                                                                     Therapy, showcasing recent work from her and her team.

Ron Hoy is the Merksamer Professor of Biology, Emeritus, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where he has taught and done research in subjects like Animal Communication, Bioacoustics, and Neuroethology.  His laboratory has published over 150 papers on how animals produce and sense sounds as signals for survival.  Ron has been fortunate to have mentored 52 brilliant PhD. graduate students and postdocs over his career.  The lab discovered novel hearing organs in a half-dozen different insects and spiders.  These discoveries have led to work on novel acoustic biosensors that have potential application to biomedical sensors in humans. Ron’s dedication to neuroscience education has extended to courses at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole and at Cornell, to 25 years of participation in workshops for College Physiology teachers.  In his “retirement,” Ron regularly teaches a course in “Mind, Brain, Music” at Cornell for undergraduates.

He will give a lecture on the Webs of Discovery: From Singing Bugs to Hearing Aids, where he explores decades of work on the topic.