Louise I. Lynch-O’Brien, PH.D

As Senior Researcher, Louise fuses strategies, writing, and outreach efforts with science and education theory. She works to illustrate and evaluate the educational and behavioral influences of programs on target audiences.

Louise’s research and professional background has focused on communicating scientific topics to a wide variety of audiences through various mediums, including popular and academic publications, exhibitry, oral presentations, workshops, citizen science programming, photography, film and formal teaching. She received a B.S. in biological sciences (2006), an M.S. in Entomology (2012) and a Ph.D. in citizen science and entomology (2016). She has studied mayflies as potential climate change bioindicators in Ireland, bees in tallgrass prairie habitats, and the fauna of Nebraska milkweeds.
She is interested in the educational and behavioral influence of informal science programs, whether entomology or otherwise, on participants.

When time is free, she likes to dabble in music composition, film, carpentry, photography, traveling, and trying new foods. But most of all, she loves spending time with her husband, their son, and her menagerie of one lovely pup, three box turtles, two red-eared sliders, and assorted invertebrate adoptees.