THE AMERICA PROJECT

Paul Vanouse

Paul Vanouse
America Project
Esther Klein Gallery
2016

Flag, Esther Klein Gallery, October 2016

THE AMERICA PROJECT

A live, biological art installation

Paul Vanouse
WITH SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATOR SOLON MORSE
Thanks To
Angela McQuillan, Curator.

Special Thanks
Millie Chen, Omar Estrada, Katya Gibel-Mevorach, Jennifer Gradecki,
Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Angela McQuillan, John Soluri, Andres TapiaUrzua, Orkan Telhan, Allison Vanouse, Donald Vanouse, Mary Vanouse,
for their stimulating questions used throughout the catalog.
Irus Braverman, Matt Caywood, Jens Hauser, Evelyn Hawthorne, Kathy
High, Joan Linder, Jamie Sanbonmatsu, Jennifer Surtees, Igor Vamos,
Melissa Vanouse, for their feedback and support.

Esther Klein Gallery (EKG)

3600 Market Street
Philadelphia PA, 19104
October 20November 19, 2016
www.paulvanouse.com/ap
www.sciencecenter.org/discover/EKG

Cover: The America Project, spittoon: Paul Vanouse; photo: Natalie DiIenno
Design: Angela McQuillan, Solon Morse

Crown, Click Festival, Helsingor, Denmark, May 2016.

Islands of Difference in a Sea of Sameness:

THE AMERICA PROJECT

Paul Vanouse

Concept
The America Project is a live, biological art installation centered around
a process called DNA gel electrophoresis, colloquially described as
DNA fingerprinting, a process which Ive appropriated to produce
recognizable images. The project premiered at the Esther Klein Gallery
on October 20, 2016.
Visitors to the installation first encountered what might resemble a
human-scale fountain or decanter, which was actually a spittoon in
which their donated spit was collected. Entering the exhibition, viewers
were offered a one ounce cup of saline solution and asked to swish for
thirty seconds, then to deposit the solution into the spittoon. During
the installation I extracted the DNA from what I hoped to be hundreds
of spit samplescontaining cheek cells and the cells DNAall mixed
together. The DNA was not individuated nor retained: it was processed as a
whole to make iconic DNA fingerprint images of powersuch as a crown,
warplanes and a flagwhich were visible as video projections of the
electrophoresis gels throughout the exhibition.
I hope that viewers reflected on some key concepts of Americasuch as the
melting pot (in this case composed of spit samples), and the notion that
power emerges from the people. Im also seeking to invert two assumptions
about DNA imaging and essential human difference by showing:
1. A coherent image can be made from mixed up/contaminated samples.
2. While much has been made of our differences, all human DNA is very
similarreinforcing my declaration of Radical Sameness that human
DNA contains only Islands of Difference in a Sea of Sameness.
2

America Project, spittoon.

Photo: Natalie DiIenno

Process of Explanation
I sent the proceeding concept description of The America Project to a
dozen colleagues, family and friends and asked of them, in the spirit of
democracy and participation, if they would pose a single question about
the work that I could incorporate into this essay.

ON COLLECTING SPIT
What about the paranoia of dna as something ultra-personal and therefore
private, still dominating in the public eye?
Omar Estrada, Toronto
DNA in the public imagination has for decades been synonymous with
identity and identification. DNA fingerprinting, DNA proling and DNA
typing are among the technical terms for procedures that fix a person
to a forensic sample or to a genetic community. These techniques
evoke bold proclamations such as DNA is a truth machine and a gold
standard of criminal identification.1 Identity-fixing technologies also
provoke a reasonable concern over personal privacy. National databases
such as the US CODIS project, a database shared among federal and
civic agencies that contains the DNA profiles of over 15 million US
citizens, epitomizes the growing threat to privacy and perhaps to liberty.
However, the fear of the penetrating gaze of the surveillant state pales
in comparison to the more ominous potential use of DNA profiles to infer
group proclivities or to institute neo-eugenic imperatives: The Gattaca
scenario.2 It is no wonder that when we give blood or tissue samples
many increasingly feel a separation anxiety about their end use.

America Project, Opening, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.

Photo: Jaime Alvarez

When audiences started to spit at the Sex Pistols on stage; when we kiss or
make loveWhen we share our chemistry as an act of closenessThe whole
idea of civilization is based on the practice of sharing our dna. However,
the social control of this exchange gives the master an upper-hand on
civilization.
Andres Tapia-Urzua, Pittsburgh, PA
Savvy personal genome companies, like 23andMe, have managed to
convince over two million people to not only donate their individual
DNA samples to be utilized as the company sees fit, but to actually pay
the company for the service. Conversely, The America Project does not
want to normalize nor acclimatize viewers to surrendering their fluids
for fun, safety or profit. Hopefully, the enormous spittoon doesnt
elicit blind trust. It is a symmetrical, somewhat anthropomorphic,
authoritarian-looking apparatus standing six feet tall. Ironically, the
spittoon was designed to serve as a utopian and unambiguous bio-matter
anonymizer. Everyones spit is mixed together, making separation/
individuation impossible. All collected samples merge to become
promiscuously commingled. What is visualized from the commingled
samples is our shared identity as mammals, our collectivity.
Image credit: 23andMe www.23andme.com/howitworks

Relative Velocity Inscription Device, Schering Foundation, Berlin, 2011.

Photo: Axel Heise

Why should I trust you with my dna?

Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Chicago, IL
The collection isnt for research purposes and I obtain and retain no
data. Your DNA is not the subject, but effectively the raw materialthe
mediumfrom which the DNA pictures will be made.

ON DNA AND RACE

The United States is a melting pot of many different races, classes and
cultures. We have an illusion of the American Dream, where everyone has
the opportunity to rise to power through their own initiative. Recent events
such as the Black Lives Matter campaign have proven that this is in fact not
the case, and in the United States certain people are valued more than others
based on their race and economic statusRace is determined by genetics, it
cannot be forged and it is passed down through generations. How does this
relate to your project? Visitors to the gallery will most likely be from all
different races, but is there a genetic majority that exerts more influence on
the final product?
Angela McQuillan, Philadelphia, PA
The overall assertion of my DNA work is that race is an elaborate
construction. This was also the consensus of genome scientists following
the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2000, who stated
that there is no genetic basis for race, because there were more genetic
differences within the so-called races than between them.3 Or as Katya
Gibel-Mevorach has written, People do not belong to a race but they
are raced; in this context, race operates as a social fact with concrete
material consequences for the manner in which experiences shape
individual lives and their meaning.4 Race then should be understood
as a verb rather than as a nouna social process through which one is
categorized rather than as an essence.
8

Relative Velocity Inscription Device, Schering Foundation, Berlin, 2011.

Photo: Axel Heise

One of my earliest projects using DNA as a medium, The Relative

Velocity Inscription Device (RVID), was intended to colorfully demonstrate
the operation of racing. Like The America Project, RVID utilized gel
electrophoresis, a laboratory method that forces the migration of dna
fragments through a porous gelatin using an electrical field. The rate of
migration depends on the size of the fragments. Complex mixtures of
fragments of different sizes result in a barcode-like pattern of bands that
can be used to differentiate dna samples, and is often referred to as DNA
fingerprinting. In RVID I wasnt producing these barcode-like patterns.
By inserting a single amplified dna fragment from a skin color gene from
each member of my Jamaican/American family adjacent to each other in
a gel and then applying an electrical current, a single band representing
each family member would move across the gel, each at a slightly different
rate depending upon the exact number of nucleotides in that fragment.
I contextualized this artistic experiment with tropes of a race, contest,
and scientific differentiation. For instance, a computer projection of the
gel image superimposes animated figures from a Eadweard Muybridge
motion study photo sequence to highlight the position of each DNA band.5
Curiously, Alec Jeffries, the population biologist who invented the
procedure and coined the term DNA fingerprinting, initially assumed
that the technique might provide ways to differentiate population
groups. The fact that it could not serves to underscore the fact that most
of our established racial groupings correspond to a cultural stereotyping
process without biological origin.
In The America Project, the idea of using audience DNA as the medium
is that there would be no discernible difference in the resulting image
no matter who participates. So while methods of contemporary DNA
imaging are designed to reveal difference between individuals at a
handful of locations in our individual genomes, I do just the opposite.
My methods target highly conserved (nearly unvarying) regions of
the human genome so little genetic variation would be revealed even
if multiple individuals spit wasnt all mixed together. My method is
not only blind to cultural categories of race, but has been intentionally
devised to also overlook minuscule individual DNA variations.
Perhaps our own bodies are the real melting pots in which the vast
history of mankind is distributed
10

America Project, Gallery visitors donating DNA, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.
Photo: Jaime Alvarez

ON DIFFERENCE
How do you call up these islands of anomalies? And are they deviant elements
such as the fin becoming a foot on the ancient fish?
Donald Vanouse, Oswego, NY
Genetic differences that produce visible manifestations in organismal
bodies are much cooler but also much rarer than the majority of genetic
variation. Much of the variation in the human genome lies in regions
that dont seem to affect our survival and do not leave a trace on the body.
Mutations can proliferate in these regions without dramatic consequence,
whereas other regions in our genome that are crucial for our survival are
more highly conserved and thus vary little between individuals.
As specific subset of these genetically variable regions, called Variable
Number Tandem Repeats (VNTRs), are typically targeted in DNA typing.
Here is an example of a VNTR sequence: GATAGATAGATAGATAGATAGATA.
Note the repeating GATA unit in the sequence? Different people can
have different numbers of the repeated unit in a VNTR region. These
glitchy-looking differences in VNTR sequences have variously been
ascribed to relics of our evolutionary past or as evidence to argue for a
gene-centered, rather than an organism-centered, view of evolution, a
theoretical framework referred to as the selfish gene.6 Because VNTR
regions are so highly variable between individuals, they are good targets
for individuation using genetic technologies.

12

America Project, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.

I also assumed there were thousands of possible dna configurations possible in the
human race. Your theme suggests that its much more limited than that. How
many dna types do you suspect are possible in the general population?
Mary Vanouse, Oswego, NY
The media often conflates DNA sequencing and DNA typing. In every
cell in our bodies, there are roughly three billion base pairs of DNA
strung together in a particular sequence to form the genome: differences
between the DNA sequences found in different cells inside a single
persons body are negligible. Between individuals, DNA sequences differ
by less than one percent: we humans share about 99% of our genetic
sequence. Excepting identical twins, no two individuals are exactly the
same, but most are virtually identical.
DNA typing generally relies on targeting regions of difference, but a forensic
DNA image would typically examine only a handful of regions within the
entire genome. Historically, as few as four and as many as fifteen sites of
greatest difference between humans, primarily VNTPs, are targeted. So,
to answer your question directly, whether we find hundreds, thousands,
millions or billions of combinations depends on how many sites we
examine. While no two humans will have exactly the same DNA sequence
across the entire genome, the probability that two humans are identical
within just a small number of sites is a bit more probable.
DNA can also be imaged to highlight other, highly stable and nonvarying parts of the genome, which is what Im doing. Imaging these
highly conserved areas of the genome would primarily be useful only for
differentiating ourselves from our distant evolutionary relatives. Any of
these methods could tell us a different story about ourselves. My method
and my story emphasizes our radical sameness at the genetic level.
In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault describes intellectual thought
of what he calls the Classical Ageroughly the mid-seventeenth to
eighteenth centuriesas characterized by ordering, identity and difference,
which gave rise to categorization and taxonomy. Naturalists of the
Classical Age were fixated on a model of living organisms as exhibiting
essential differences that could be grouped and charted.7 I believe that this
is a world-view which still lingers. Im suggesting a model of difference as
a tentative emergence from a sea of relative sameness.
14

Crown, live projection, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.

ON POWER, DEMOCRACY, GOVERNMENTALITY

I am wondering how you conceive of biopower and how it is embodied,
performed, employed or represented in your project.
Jennifer Gradecki, East Lansing, MI
If power comes from the people, shouldnt the image be one of rebellion or a
counter vision?
Millie Chen, Ridgeway, ON
I think these questions really pinpoint the highly-charged ambivalence
Im hoping to create in this work. Jennifer noted that Michel Foucault
coined the term biopower as a form of governmentality, administered
from above to create, manage, and control populations, in which
biological processes such as birth and death all fall under this umbrella
of control at every level of the social body. Whereas for Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri, biopower comes from below, and in the common
fabric of the biopolitical diagram rest latent, potential, chrysalis-like
the capacities for the multitude to determine autonomously the political
diagonal of the transition.8
The DNA molecule has been easily integrated into the most oppressive
biopolitical regime. It has been described as the master molecule, that
controls our destiny. This notion has been propagated since Francis
Crick first described the dogma of DNA as a one-way command flow
in the cell from DNA to RNA to protein. Furthermore, DNA imaging has
come to epitomize authoritarian surveillant power used to discern and
identify individuals in a vast population, from the most minute trace.
My artistic process, making DNA images which dont individuate nor
expose, is the counter vision that Im advancing here.
This concept of latency has been a theme in my own work, and is the basis
for the dialectic Im creating here. The latent images produced by the
DNA are (1) a US flag, (2) a crown, and (3) the infinity symbol. The crown
16

Infinity, live projection, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.

symbolizes pure, top-down rigid power, the infinity sign symbolized

endless potential, hope and possibility, while the flags meaning would
remain elusive, particularly in the shadow of the forthcoming election.
The America Project was installed from October 20 to November 19, 2016,
a period in which the ultimate meaning of the subject/citizen and the
meaning of America were being both contested and subverted.
The title The America Project itself was chosen to temporalize and
desolidify the concept of America. The term project implies a goaloriented mission, or experiment, which in this case recollects the early
utopian plan for America as a place in which the hardships of the land
would result in equality. In recent US elections, this utopian residue has
catalyzed both hopes for our capacity for social progress (Obama), but
also neo-imperialist doctrines of exceptionalism (Bush) and extreme
nationalism and xenophobia (Trump).

18

Degenerated Crown, live projection, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.

How might Cesare Lombroso and racialized discussions of degeneration including

class and criminality echo in contemporary concerns about democracywho is
fit to vote? Is there something genetic about stupidity and would the evidence be
absent among the visitors to highbrow institutional spaces?
Katya Gibel-Mevorach, Grinnell, IA
Its tempting to invoke and re-spin the concept of degeneration in
thinking about this election. In particular, the film Idiocracy, written
by Mike Judge and Etan Cohen, seems to have imagined a fitting
dystopia built of intellectual degeneration, capitalism, hyper-mediation
and automation. In the film, zombie-like future humans struggle to
comprehend the barren fields and pending famine caused by a corporate
crop management system that no longer uses water to hydrate crops.
Water has been associated with toilets by the producers of a Gatoradelike product called Brawndo, which is used for drinking as well as for
agriculture. Future humans seem to have lost the ability to solve the
crisis through reason as they are only capable of repeating the advertising
slogan Brawndo. Its got what plants crave. Its got electrolytes.9
Of course, neither determining genes nor anthropomorphic signifiers
for intelligence (whatever intelligence means) have ever been identified.
And its not for lack of effort over the last 150 years. From the
physiognomists, eugenicists and social Darwinists to contemporary
proponents of determinist trends in genomics, genetics and criminology
that have yet to be cohesively labeled, the public appetite for theories of
a biological basis for intelligence waxes and wanes but is ever present.
Clearly, people can behave stupidly, but I dont attribute this to heredity.

20

Ocular Revision, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2011.

Photo: Tom Loonan

ON MOLECULES AND PROTO-LIFE

This transient nature of the dna molecules are often not addressed. We focus on
dna, because it is part of us (the living), but they also belong to the non-human
world most of the time. So, when we represent ourselves, our ideologies, our
symbols of power, are there any unheard voices in the background?
Orkan Telhan, Philadelphia, PA

I agree that while the site and scale of observation in the life sciences over
the centuries has shifted from the organism to DNA molecules, all the
dogmas and grand narratives have been written from a human perspective.
It is only recently that we have begun to consider the philosophical and
ethical implications of expanding the circle of moral concern and extending
subjectivities beyond the human species, a project characterized as
Posthumanism. For instance, the recent microbiome craze, based around
the fact our bodies contain far more bacterial than human cells, seems to be
creating more nuanced understandings of symbiotic and parasitic organisms
and complicating our human essence and subjectivity. More ominously, the
discovery of proteins like the prions responsible for mad cow disease offers
a whole new window into the dynamic behavior of non-living molecules.
These prions directly influence the form of other proteins in the host,
causing an exponential cascade of misfolded proteins leading to brain rot.
With an earlier project Ocular Revision (2010), I was suggesting other
scales of observation. I was also trying to underscore that DNA was
a material substancedeoxyribose nucleic acidnot limited to any
particular life form, nor some sort of cybernetic command code. In Ocular
Revision, I made images of the Earths hemispheres from a mixture
of DNA obtained from Escherichia coli bacteria and lambda phage virus.
This DNA was processed to generate a range of fragment sizes that were
combined and inserted into a circular electrophoresis apparatus to create
the images. By asserting DNA as a very physical medium with distinct
material properties, Ive tried to dissociate the notion of DNA as an
informatic code belonging to an organism and to reconnect it to the vast
chemical and material realm that is enmeshed in the fabric of life.
22

DISTANCE (mm)

America Project: DNA sizing chart

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16

20

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28

32

36

40

44

48

52

56

60

64

68

72

76

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84

88

92

96

100

0 200

600

1000

1400

1800

2200

2600

3000

3400

3800

4600

5000

5400

FRAGMENT SIZE (bp)

4200

5800

6200

6600

7000

7400

7800

8200

8600

9000

9400

9800

PROCESS/TECHNIQUE
From my laypersons point of view, why would a pure sample produce a
coherent (cultural) image that resonates outside of a biotechnical context?
John Soluri, Pittsburgh, PA
As I try to picture your installation in the theater of my head, I notice that the
part of me that knows the national anthem would be tempted to apply that
naive reading, national-character-through-individual-difference, with a
kind of magical thinking This is partly because it seems like the collection of
samples is an unnecessary step or a red herring: couldnt you produce the image
without collecting so many samples?
Allison Vanouse, Boston, MA

In addition to purified anonymous human genomic DNA purchased

online, I collected DNA samples at the gallery opening to use as the raw
material for making the image. I suppose an analogy could be made to
how many large, iron-rich stones might be required to make a red oxide
pigment in a painters palette. Of course, this association with base
matter dethrones DNA from its lofty perch as the master molecule. But
it simultaneously dethrones the idea that our DNA is special or unique.
Im asserting a perspective of what I call radical sameness. Our DNA
is 99% the same and it can be produced in mass quantities as a plastic
medium of representation, to be honed and tooled to make a picture, or
an icon, or some sort of evidence, or to tell a story.
I think a detailed description of the three different approaches used to
make the image is fitting here. Remember, in gel electrophoresis, small
fragments of DNA move faster than large fragments, and this difference
in speed of movement creates the patterns in the gel. In the flag image,
the long stripes are made by subjecting large quantities of DNA to a
digestive enzyme that cuts the DNA at specific base pair sequences.
Each individual piece of DNA is cleaved into innumerable fragments

24

Flag, live projection, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.

containing from just a few to thousands of base-pairs each. When run

on the gel, this mixture of fragments appears as a long smear.
The stars in the flag were produced using the PCR amplification process, a
method by which one can make billions of copies of small regions of DNA.
Each well-defined star-like band contains DNA of a particular number of
base-pairs, beginning with about 10,000 and ending at about 1,800.
The short stripes that appear just to the right of the star field were also
manufactured using the PCR amplification process. However, the aim was
to produce smears rather than well-defined bands, something typically
avoided in standard lab work. Solon Morse, my scientific collaborator,
devised the method after procuring the book PCR Troubleshooting and
Optimization, turning to the troubleshooting section and using it as a howto.10 For instance, there was a section in the book addressing the following
problem: I am not achieving sharp bands, but rather long smears
Among other things, the authors suggested increasing the amount of time
the DNA molecule is copied and/or decreasing the amount of template DNA
used in the reaction. Solons approach was to do the opposite.
This connected to my approach of doing molecular biology in reverse;
thinking about the scientific methods used to diagnose something
as fabrication protocols to produce something. Ive always believed
that artists working in emerging forms need to go beyond standard
laboratory techniques and creatively hack in this area, and that these
techniques should be deeply intertwined in the intent of the work.
Hans-Jorg Rheinberger refers to this type of artistic practice as one of
suruse, a blend of the French preposition sur (on, above or on top of)
with use, but he also mentions the association with sur-real to connote
an intent radically beyond typical use.

26

America Project, Opening, Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.

Photo: Jaime Alvarez

Notes
1

See Michael Lynch, Simon A. Cole, Ruth McNally and Kathleen Jordan, Truth
Machine (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008).

See Gattaca: A 1997 American science fiction film written and directed by Andrew
Niccol, starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. It portrays a eugenic future in
which social roles and employment are dictated by perceived genetic fitness.

See Natalie Angier, Do Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows, New York Times
(August 22, 2000).

Katya Gibel Mevorach, Interpreting the Census: The Elasticity of Whiteness and
the Depoliticization of Race, Racial Liberalism and the Politics of Urban America, Ed:
Curtis Stokes, Theresa A. Melendez (Michigan State University Press, East Lansing,
2007) p. 155.

While Eadweard Muybridges motion studies were conducted prior to the Eugenics
movement, the appropriation of his figures in the work was intended to invoke the
idea of applying the visual technologies of the time to measurement of man.

See The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, (Oxford University Press, 1976). Dawkins
argues for a gene-centric, rather than organism-centric model of evolution in which
fitness might best be understood in relation to a specific genes proliferation. His
argument is not without its detractors, in particular surrounding questions of moral
behavior

See Michel Foucault, Order of Things, (Random House, New York, 1971).

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, (Harvard University Press,

Cambridge, 2009) p. 365.

See Idiocracy: a 2006 American science fiction comedy film directed by Mike Judge
depicting the future US in which selective breeding has happened in reverse. Set in
2050, humans live an Orwellian, social Darwinist nightmare of imbecile citizens and
corporate-powered totalitarianism.

10

See PCR Troubleshooting and Optimization, Susanne Kennedy and Nick Oswald
(Caister Academic Press, Norfolk, 2011).

28

Paul Vanouse is an artist, Professor of Art and the founding Director

of the Coalesce Center for Biological Art at the University at Buffalo.
Interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his art practice.
His bio-media and interactive cinema projects have been exhibited in over
25 countries. Recent solo exhibitions include: Beall Center at UC Irvine
(2013), Muffathalle in Munich (2012), Schering Foundation in Berlin
(2011), and Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana (2011). Vanouses artworks have
been funded by Renew Media/Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital
Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation
for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Sun Microsystems and
the National Science Foundation. He has received awards at festivals
including Prix ARS Electronica in Linz, Austria (2007, 2010, 2013), and
Vida, Art and Artificial Life competition in Madrid, Spain (2002, 2011).
Vanouses recent projects, Latent Figure Protocol, Ocular Revision and
Suspect Inversion Center use molecular biology techniques to challenge
genome-hype and to engage issues surrounding DNA fingerprinting,
particularly the idea the most authoritative image of our time, the DNA
fingerprint, is somehow natural. He has a BFA from the University at
Buffalo and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Solon Morse is the laboratory manager at the Coalesce Center for
Biological Art at the University at Buffalo. His interests include
evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation. His research includes
the conservation genetics of amphibians in New York, the evolution
and ecology of the microbial associates of blood-feeding ectoparasites of
bats, and the landscape ecology, population dynamics and conservation
of neotropical migratory birds. He has published articles in a range of
peer-reviewed journals, including Conservation Biology, Studies in Avian
Biology, PLoS ONE, and Applied and Environmental Microbiology, and
has contributed several book chapters, most recently to Parasite Diversity
and Diversification (2015). Solon has a PhD in Evolutionary Biology
from the University at Buffalo and a Masters in Ecology, Evolution and
Behavior from the University of Illinois.