Kelly Weinersmith
American biologist and author
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kelly Weinersmith (née Smith) is an American biologist, writer, and podcaster.[1] She is a member of the faculty at Rice University in the Department of BioSciences, and an alumni collaborator with the Parasite Ecology Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara.[2][3] She is co-author, with her husband Zach Weinersmith, of popular science books Soonish (2017) and A City on Mars (2023).
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Research
A parasitologist, Weinersmith is the co-discoverer of Euderus set, commonly known as the crypt-keeper wasp.[4]
Books
- Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything (2017) is a work Kelly co-authored with her husband Zach Weinersmith looking at upcoming technologies that could change the future.[5][6][7][8][9] The book made #7 in Science on The New York Times bestsellers in the science book category.[10]
- A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (2023), which Kelly also co-authored with her husband Zach Weinersmith, is a popular science book on space settlement and challenges facing a potential colonization of Mars, colonization of the Moon, and related activities. In particular, it draws on Weinersmith's experience as an ecologist to study maintaining ecologies off-Earth where the humans in them do not all rapidly perish, a difficult task.[11] The work made 11th place on The New York Times Best Seller list for all hardback non-fiction books.[12] It was awarded the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.[13][14]
Other activities
Weinersmith is co-host of the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe,[15] and regular co-host of the podcast Science... sort of.[16]
She was a speaker at Smithsonian Magazine's "2015 Future Is Here Festival".[17]