Aaron Pomerantz (UC Berkeley): Decoding Butterfly Color 

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Aaron Pomerantz goes on a journey to the Amazon rainforest to decode butterfly color.
Talk Overview:
How is butterfly color created? In this lecture, Aaron Pomerantz takes us on a journey through the Amazon rainforest, where interesting observations about butterfly color and patterns lead him to use imaging and genetics to decode butterfly color.
Speaker Biography:
Aaron Pomerantz grew up in Los Angeles, California, with a passion to understand how the natural world works. After completing a B.S. in Entomology at the University of California, Riverside, he completed a M.S. in Molecular Biology at the University of Florida. He then spent two years as a Field Biologist at the Tambopata Research Center, a remote research outpost in the Peruvian Amazon. During that time, Aaron has been involved in numerous science communication efforts and received grant funding from the National Geographic Society to apply novel technology to fieldwork, such as origami-based microscopes and handheld gene sequencers. He is currently in a Ph.D. program in the Integrative Biology department in Dr. Nipam Patel's lab at UC Berkeley, interested in how butterflies are able to produce such an incredible array of colors through the use of pigments and structural coloration.