Summer Science Seminars

Weekly seminars are designed to broaden and enrich the intellectual experience of our summer research students. The speakers design their talks to be interesting and valuable for the undergraduate audience of varying scientific backgrounds and fields. Included are some talks by Wesleyan alumni who have gone on to careers in the sciences. Research students are encouraged to talk with the speaker, both in the formal seminar period, and in more informal smaller groups.

Research in Science Summer Program 2024 Seminar Series

All seminars begin at 12:00pm in Shanklin 107 unless otherwise specified. Snacks provided, please bring your own drinks.

  • June 13: "The wisdom of might: How children come to appreciate multiple possibilities""

    seminar-photo-brian-leahy.pngBrian Leahy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the consequences of your decisions will be. Before making an important decision, you might want to take into account what you know and also what you don’t know. You need to consider how the world is and how it isn’t, and use those facts to guide your decision-making. But if there’s some important missing information, you should also consider the facts about what might and might not happen. Brian Leahy, a developmental psychologist who splits his time between Brown and MIT, studies how children make decisions in the face of multiple open possibilities, and how their decision-making changes with age. He holds two PhDs, one in philosophy (University of Connecticut) and one in psychology (Harvard). He was also a postdoc in linguistics (University of Konstanz). He has found striking deficits in preschoolers’ decision-making: when there is more than one open possibility, preschoolers identify one of the possibilities and treat it as the fact of the matter. They do not seem to understand, as an adult would, that their chosen possibility might and might not be real. How does adultlike reasoning develop? One hypothesis is that language plays a role: children learn to think better by learning to talk about possibilities. 

    Host: Anna Shusterman 

  • June 20: RIS Summer Program Alumni Panel

    Join alumni of the Research in Science Summer Program to learn how their experiences at Wesleyan prepared them for their futures in science!

    The speakers will be announced soon.

  • June 27: To Be Scheduled
    The speaker will be announced soon.
  • July 11: Title To Be Determined

    June Huang, Columbia University

     

    Host: Meredith Hughes

  • July 18: Title To Be Determined

    Jennifer Mitchel, Wesleyan University

     

    Host: Seth Redfield

  • July 26: KEYNOTE LECTURE
    The Keynote speaker will be announced soon.

Prior year seminar schedules:

Summer 2023 - Summer 2022 - Summer 2021 - Summer 2019 - Summer2017 - Summer 2016 - Summer 2015 - Summer 2014 - Summer 2013 - Summer 2012 - Summer 2011