Biology Renewed: Re-thinking the Relationship Between Organism and EnvironmentFeed-Your-Head SeriesIn-Person
Thursday, Mar 12, 2026
5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
To be announced
For much of modern biology, genes have been cast as the primary authors of who we are. Recent research, however, tells a livelier—and far more surprising—story. Genes do not operate in isolation; they listen, respond, and adapt to the conditions around them. Environment shapes development, physiology, and health in deep and often ingenious ways, and its influence can ripple across generations. Just as intriguingly, organisms are not passive residents of their surroundings: by living, moving, and growing, they reshape and sometimes improve the very environments they call home.
In this program, biologist Sonia Sultan invites teachers to reimagine the relationship between organism and environment as an ongoing conversation. Drawing on elegant examples from animal studies, her own research on how plants respond to environmental change, and work on human health, Sultan explores how life is continually formed through interaction with the world around it. Together, we will consider a more relational and responsive view of biology—one that restores a sense of dynamism, interdependence, and quiet wonder to the living systems we study, teach, and inhabit.
Cost: $25 (a $60 value, includes dinner and drinks)
Early Booking Exclusively for Academy Fellows*
Through February 18th, Fellows will have early access to purchase tickets for $25 each. Space is very limited!
*You are a Fellow of The Academy for Teachers if you have been accepted to, and attended, an in-person master class.
Sonia Sultan
Sonia E. Sultan studies the developmental interplay between genetic and environmental influences in plants and, more broadly, in ecology and evolution. She has addressed these issues over three decades in scientific articles, as well as in national and international keynote lectures and symposia, and in her 2015 Oxford University Press monograph, Organism and Environment. Sultan holds a B.A. in history and philosophy of science from Princeton University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Center for Population Biology, she joined the biology faculty at Wesleyan University, where she has been named the Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science. Sultan also holds associate positions at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition in Austria and serves on the advisory board of the Kellner Center for Neurogenomics, Behavior, and Society. She has been a resident fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, the Konrad Lorenz Institute, and the University of Otago in New Zealand.