Myco Mind Meld – Live Panel Discussion
Myco Mind Meld will connect fungal thought leaders across the globe. Join Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life, Peter McCoy, author of Radical Mycology, and Dr. Adam Cobb, mycorrhizal ecologist, and the Soil Food Web School’s Science Communicator. Topics range from fungal cell biology and their specific morphology to the broader role of fungi underlying plant and community health.
Speakers
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Dr. Adam B. CobbSoil Food Web School, Content Development & Science EditorAdam’s passion for agriculture emerged in 2008, during his three months of volunteer work on organic farms in New Zealand. His time in graduate school cultivated a broad vision for the restoration of living soils, as well as utilization of research and community engagement to address current and emerging global food production challenges. After completing his doctorate at Oklahoma State University in 2016, he was funded as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Instructor. During the past 5 years, Adam authored or coauthored 20 research publications focused on agroecology and plant-microbial symbioses. He also taught multiple undergraduate and graduate courses on global food security, restoration ecology, and environmental science. He joined The Soil Food Web School in 2021, following his dream to help regenerate soils, improve human nutrition, and protect our planet.
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Dr. Adrienne GodschalxSoil Food Web School Mentor and ResearcherDr. Adrienne Godschalx studied chemical ecology at Portland State University and conducted her PhD research on nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and how a plant’s belowground symbiosis can affect leaf chemistry, and as a result, the plant’s relationship with insects, both herbivore pests and beneficial predators. She pursued her research further as a postdoc at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where she investigated the volatile organic compounds plants emit as signals to microbes and insects. When Adrienne started working as a Mentor for the Soil Food Web School, she was bewildered by the potency of the soil food web in plant health and plant-insect interactions: that leaving the harmful -icides aside and restoring the soil food web can nourish nutrient-rich, naturally-defended plants. Adrienne is thrilled to have a tangible way to engage in symbiosis with the beautiful wild world.
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Dr. Merlin SheldrakeBiologist and AuthorDr. Sheldrake is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms.
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Peter McCoyAuthor, Mycologist, founder of MYCOLOGOSPeter McCoy is an author, researcher, and interdisciplinary educator advancing a variety of applied mycology fields. With nearly 20 years of experience working with fungi, Peter is widely regarded as a pioneer in areas of environmental regeneration utilizing fungi. And his exhaustive reference guide to these and other practices, Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi (Chthaeus Press, 2016), is considered a milestone for the progress of mycology as a people’s science.
Peter is an original founder of the mycological advocacy organization Radical Mycology, a committee member of the Fungi Film Festival, and the founder of MYCOLOGOS, the world’s first mycology school. He is also the lead mycologist at MycoCycle, an applied mycoremediation company based in Chicago, Illinois, as well as the mycology advisor to Open Source Ecology and The Permaculture Student. From his hometown in Portland, Oregon, Peter’s daily practice centers on pondering, designing, cultivating, and researching ever-healthier relations between humans, fungi, and the habitats we share.