Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Eco-Performance Lab during Pratt’s 2019 Green Week the first step of “To the Core of Me”

Posted 17 Mar 2019 / 0

As I have posted before, I am lucky to be involved in a new STEAMplant project entitled “To the Core of Me: A Hike-Play“. I have begun my collaboration with Sirovich Family Resident Jeremy Pickard (@jeremy_pickard) and my Pratt colleague, anthropologist Jennifer Telesca, and we are excited to announce the first outward-facing step of the Read More

A Major Post, Activism, Climate Change, Ecology, Pratt Institute, STEAMplant, Sustainable Pratt

My newest STEAMplant collaboration is “To the Core of Me: A Hike Play”

Posted 17 Feb 2019 / 0

I have been very fortunate to be a collaborator on a number of Pratt STEAMplant (@prattsteamplant) projects. The latest is called “To the Core of Me: A Hike Play” and supports Sirovich Family Resident Jeremy Pickard (@jeremy_pickard). My Pratt colleague, anthropologist Jennifer Telesca, is also a collaborator on the project. Core of Me will be Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Cultural Anthropology, Ecology, Ecology Education, Environmental Justice, STEAMplant

My interview with Ardis DeFreece has been published in SciArt Magazine

Posted 15 Feb 2019 / 0

Ardis DeFreece creating the “Curiosity” installation at the Hatfield Marine Science Center I am very excited that my interview with painter and draftswoman Ardis DeFreece has been published in SciArtMagazine. You can read the interview, “Ardis DeFreece: Curiosity at the Intersection Between Art and Science“, for free. I met Ardis at the 2017 Ecological Society of Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Art & Design, Ecology, Ethics, Public Art, Science (General), Science in Art & Design, STEAMplant

How does this professor really spend his work time? (Fall 2018)

Posted 11 Jan 2019 / 0

After my first year of being a tenure-track professor, I knew that I had a problem: I wasn’t being mindful of how I spent my time. This had been a problem for me in graduate school, but once I got on the tenure track, the stakes became a lot higher. I knew that if I Read More

A Major Post, Higher Education, Research Projects, Teaching

SSE tells HHS to acknowledge sex and gender diversity

Posted 16 Nov 2018 / 0

Society for the Study of Evolution Letter RE: Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender It is really exciting when one’s professional society stands up for an important issue, and this issue is near and dear to both my teaching interests and my heart. The idea that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — an agency Read More

A Minor Post, Professional Societies, Public Policy, Science (General), Sex and Reproduction, Social Norms, Society for the Study of Evolution

A cool (new-ish) IPD game theory simulator!

Posted 25 Oct 2018 / 0

Back in 2011, I worked with a talented Pratt Digital Arts graduate student name Jean Ho Chu to create a flash-based game that allowed players to explore Robert Axelrod’s seminal iterated prisoner’s dilemma simulations. I think that our game was pretty valuable, mostly thanks to Jean’s many innovative graphic and interactive creations. But culture ratchets Read More

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Educational Software and Apps, Game Theory, Teaching Tools

Can mathematics save us from partisan Gerrymandering?

Posted 25 Oct 2018 / 0

Scientific American “Geometry versus Gerrymandering” This is a really well-written article that explains why it hasn’t been easy for mathematicians to contribute to a definition of Gerrymandering… and how using an old mathematical approach to attack the problem could provide clear benchmarks for defining a Gerrymander. I love when math and science can be brought as Read More

A Minor Post, Computer Science, Ethics, Mathematics, Science (General), Social Science

YES, microplastics end up in our guts. Now the question is from where? And to what effect?

Posted 22 Oct 2018 / 0

The New York Times “Microplastics Find Their Way Into Your Gut, a Pilot Study Finds” For those of us who have been aware of the quickly-emerging fields studying microplastic pollution, these results are far from surprising. I am in fact more surprised that this rather limited pilot study was the first of its kind. While Read More

A Minor Post, Environmental Justice, Health & Medicine, Pollution

When it comes to considering sex and gender, don’t forget sex determination

Posted 22 Oct 2018 / 0

Scientific American “Beyond XX and XY: The Extraordinary Complexity of Sex Determination” I teach about sex and gender in a lot of my courses. For some courses, such as Evolution or The Evolution of Sex, these are basic concepts that need to be established in order to study reproductive behaviors. For other courses, such as Breeders, Propagators, & Read More

A Minor Post, Information Design, MSCI-362, The Evolution of Sex, Sex and Reproduction

Break not the ungulate culture of migration

Posted 27 Sep 2018 / 0

Science “Is ungulate migration culturally transmitted? Evidence of social learning from translocated animals” Wow, this is super cool. We often think of humans as exclusively cultural, but it is only the extent to which we rely on culture that makes us unique. That doesn’t mean that culture’s not crucial to the learning of other animals, whose Read More

A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Cultural Evolution, Mammals