 I am so excited for what is about to happen. And to introduce you to what is about to happen, I welcome to the stage my dear friend and colleague in the Department of English, Phillip Bryant. Good morning. So, after 59 long years, we're doing this opening processional in a slightly different manner this fall. Trigger warning, there will be no Elgard, no tried and true pomp and circumstance, no Brahms Academic Festival Orbiture, or grand march from Act II of Giuseppe Verity's Grand Opera Aida. So sorry folks, no Egyptian chariots, no real live elephants. What we do have for the first time ever in the history of the Nobel Conference is a full bodied and vibrant celebration of America's greatest contribution to world culture thus far, jazz. So, when these, thank you, so when these particularly home grown saints that you see in the back there that are here among us today in the town of St. Peter come marching in, they will be led by modern dancers performing original choreography by my very able colleague from the theater and dance department, Melissa Rolnick and our great jazz ensemble playing an original composition entitled Flash Patterns by their director and leader in all things jazz, Professor Dave Stamps. This processional will employ two primary and essential elements of this African based black American musical form we call jazz, rhythm and dance intertwined to weave history and story and spirit into one. In this case, the story of our most important fellow beings here on this planet, the tiny little insects, but also in that intertwining of rhythm and dance weaving an essential story of our own true interdependent, interconnected human cells on this earth. The great jazz arranger, composer and tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath called jazz music the true democracy of our creativity. Everyone has an equal voice in jazz. Everyone has an important story to tell to the world in this music. From the highest to the lowest, from the most powerful and manner born to the least ones here among us. No matter if you're born black, white or brown, jazz is to be felt deeply, spiritually, as well as to be heard and danced to. It embodies not only a distinctly American art form, style and tradition, but a whole way of life, a way of being, seeing and hearing. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, jazz is simply a cosmos embodying not just one person or one group, but multitudes. And in jazz, every improvised note and chord and song that belongs to me as well belongs to you. And as well belongs to all the other saintly living creatures of our shared and precious, very fragile world, both large and as we will soon learn, very, very small too. So after 59 years, let's all join in right now for something slightly different from this, for this year's Nobel conference. In this time of trial and trouble, let's all just try and walk together, children, to be a part of this number. And don't you ever get weary, because by and by, we're going to lay down this heavy load when all the saints, every single one of them, both large and small, come marching in. Insects, big impact. Dave Stamps, the composer and conductor, the guest musicians and members of the Gustavus Jazz Ensemble. Thank you to Melissa Rolnick, the choreographer, and our student dancers. Dave Ryan, our visual artist, and Professor Priscilla Briggs for helping to coordinate and the lighting team from heroic productions for that amazing opening. Once more, let's thank them for that rendition of insects. As a person who truly loves the outdoors, I really love the fireflies. Did you catch them in the video? What an incredible way to set the mood for these two days when we will wrestle with thought-provoking questions at the intersection of science and ethics. I am so pleased that you have joined us here on campus, and I also extend a warm welcome to our audience attending through the livestream. As we begin this Nobel conference, I would like to take a moment to pause and reflect on the fact that Gustavus Adolphus College is located on the ancestral homelands of the Dakota people, whose spiritual traditions include the belief that this land, along with the creatures and people living on it, are their relatives. The Minnesota River and its watershed are sacred places. These waters and lands are interconnected with Dakota culture, language, creation stories, spiritual rights, livelihood, and sustenance. As a college, we seek to honor Indigenous people and communities by telling the truth about the history of our presence on this site. Over time and through sustained dialogue, we are committed to building relationships and taking deliberate steps towards co-creating a better future for all. And now it is my great honor to call upon a member of the Dakota community, Everett Black Thunder, a Dakota language teacher who will offer a prayer and song as part of this conference opening. Everett. For that traditional Dakota song, what a stirring way to open our conference. We are grateful that Everett could be with us today. As we begin this year's Nobel conference, I extend heartfelt gratitude to our thoughtful and highly qualified speakers who will guide our conversation today and tomorrow. I look forward to learning from these experts. Gustavus is pleased and proud that we are the only institution in the United States authorized by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden to use the Nobel name in conjunction with an event. We are grateful to the Nobel Foundation board for their continued support of the Nobel conference. Also, we wish to take a moment to thank those who have helped to underwrite the cost of this conference. The Nobel conference has an endowed fund that supports a portion of the conference costs. Core funding comes from the generous support received from the late Reverend Drell and Adeline Bernersen. Other gifts to the fund have been made by Don and Ted Michael, Russell and Rhoda Lund, Drs. Robert E. and Susan T. Rydell, William Harvey and Peg Sutherland, the Mardag Foundation in memory of Edgar B. Ober and the United Health Group. This year, we give a special thanks to a recently secured intention from Steve Sether, a friend of the conference who is providing future endowment support. In addition, we are grateful to the RJ Foundation of Sweden for their funding to expand the digital reach of the conference. Special thanks to the conference planning committee led by Dr. Margaret Blokkasi, as well as the gifted team at Heroic Productions for their work in leading the sound, lights, and live stream. And now, let us continue with an invocation provided by Chaplain Betsy Huyum to bless our time together at this conference. Good morning. Thank you for this time to be together today to deepen our awareness and understanding of these tiny creatures, insects with their little bodies that make a big impact. As humans, our lives are inextricably linked with insects, and they have so much to teach us. From ancient times, people have been interested in this smallest life forms. In the book of Genesis, chapter one, God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind, cattle and creeping things, and wild animals of the earth of every kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. And then God said, let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness. God created them. The Bible, written thousands of years ago, mentions ants and gnats, fleas and flies, bees and hornets, spiders and grasshoppers. As a Lutheran college of Swedish heritage, we are rooted in the Christian faith and open to all. The Nobel conference is a time to come together and delve deeper into the relationship between science and religion. May this conference be a time of blessing. We give thanks for the conference presenters and you as the participants, for this time of learning to deepen our awareness and understanding, for the tiny creatures we are focusing on and for those who study insects, and for all who are gathered here in person and online with curiosity and wonder. Amen. Thank you, Chaplain Hoyam. It is now my great pleasure to welcome Nobel conference director, Dr. Lisa Helke, who will be our guide over the next two days. Lisa, thank you for your hard work and leadership of this conference. From the 17th century poet Basho, a caterpillar, this deep in fall, still not a butterfly? Actually, in an October like this one, I think they've got a little while to go yet, so maybe they'd be OK. So welcome to you all. So wonderful to welcome you to this conference. We've been planning for two years. It's a pleasure to welcome you both online and in person. Those of you online are going to have a special experience hosted by our alumnus and board member Tane Danger, who is this year joined by science journalist Maggie Kurth. Tane and Maggie, thanks so much for being here. So as I say every year, the program for this conference is kind of like your syllabus. It's a really fast two-day intensive course in insects. So please read your program to learn and take it home with you. And also, after your home, you'll want to dig into the conference website where you'll find lots of resources that maybe you didn't realize you were so interested in. But you will be after you go home. So the conference is organized so that there will be one or two talks and then a long discussion period focused on the talks that we've just heard. Please submit your questions as always. If you're in the hall with us, you can submit them on paper. Legible handwriting, please. And if you're online, you can submit them to Nobel Conference, one word, at Gustavus.edu. But don't just send them to us. Post them on social media, if you like. Or I don't know, do something crazy, like have a face-to-face conversation with someone at lunch about something you're wondering about. If you do use social media, we'd love it if you'd add the hashtag nobel59. Today, over lunch, you have an opportunity to go to some special breakout sessions, some of which are of special interest to Minnesotans about some of our indigenous insects, OK, and also ticks. And also some that really show the breadth of ways in which insects are relevant to the whole scope of the liberal arts college. In addition, and as always, as you can see, we have music. We have an art exhibit. We have spaces to go learn more, to contemplate, to walk in nature. Remember that the Nobel Conference brings together students, educators, and members of the general public together with the leading thinkers of our time to explore revolutionary, transformative, and pressing scientific questions, as well as the ethical issues that arise with them. We're exploring science and ethics in dialogue with each other through this conference. This morning, I was reading the Cambridge newsletter, and it noted that they have a new vice chancellor in America. And she said, what I think is the most important thing for our university to be practicing right now is disagreeing well. And I thought, what a wonderful phrase. Agreeing well is a wonderful thing. But in this time of challenge, I think learning to disagree with each other well in ways that deepen the conversation is really among the most important things we can do. So I invite you all to this two days disagree well with each other. Lots of people to thank over the course of two days. And I know that we're all dying to get to the first talk, so I'll try to make this quick. I'll start with the Nobel Conference Committee. Margaret Block-Casi, its chair. Priscilla Briggs. Mike Ferragamo. Janie Franson. Jos Hadjos. Lauren Hecht. Marissa Calbermatt and Yuta Kawalasaki. Sam Kessler. Amy Cusick. Pascal Chor. Katie Lehigh. Martha Ndakalako. Jessica Static, Dave Stamson, Colleen Stockman. So thanks to all that committee that has worked so hard over the last several years on this conference. And now, one more layer of the chrysalis. And that is Margaret Block-Casi, who is in fact a member of the Department of Biology. The mistake in the program is mine. I own it. She is not, in fact, a philosophy department member, although we would welcome her with open arms. She is in fact a member of the Department of Biology. And I welcome her to the stage now. Welcome to Nobel Conference 59, Insects, Little Body, Big Impact. I want to thank the Nobel Conference Planning Committee, my Nobel Conference planning class, the director, Professor Lisa Helke, and Associate Vice President of Marketing and Communication, Barb Larson-Taylor. For their work developing content, organizing and facilitating this remarkable conference. Without these people and many others behind the scenes, this event would not be possible. So why insects? Well, they have a much larger than their life role in our lives and on the earth. Insects affect what and how we eat, our health and well-being. And they tend to evoke very strong reactions from us. Insects also make their way in the world in a profoundly different way than humans do. We have a lot that we can learn from them. Like it or not, insects and humans resemble each other in some very important ways. Of course, we all need to eat and reproduce before we die. But deeper than that, these similarities have been largely studied in the fruit or pumice fly, Drosophila melanogaster. And what we've learned is that at the level of cell function, we're actually very, very similar. Even deeper within our genome, about 75% of the gene mutations that are associated with human diseases can be found in fruit flies. So we can learn a lot about how our own bodies function by studying insect bodies. While at the level of genes and cells, we share remarkable similarities with insects, their lives remain largely unknown to us. Insects are not humans. One major difference is insect small body size, which causes them to interact with their physical environment in very different ways than we do. Physical forces such as gravity, surface adhesion, that's just stickiness between surfaces, cohesion and friction all have equivalent effects on insect bodies. But at the human scale, gravity rains supreme. Because of this difference, insects can walk up walls. They can fall from very high distances without being harmed. However, they cannot coast when they fly, and they always risk death by raindrop. A second major difference between insects and humans relates to their sensitivity to their surroundings. Different types of insects detect and integrate vast amounts of visual, mechanical, and chemical information from their environment, often at levels far beyond what humans can detect. While humans rely on sight, insects live in a chemical world, and different insects are able to taste or smell with their antennae, with their mouth parts, with each of their six legs and even their genitals. Because of this, insects detect and respond to facets of our environment that we don't consciously recognize. It's pretty trippy stuff. We've organized the talks thematically. After insect appreciation 101, we will try to get into a bug's head to understand more about insect perception and its ethical implications. Then we turn to insect-human interactions, hopefully from a slightly different perspective, while exploring insects as a source of nutrition, as well as attitudes about eating insects, including, and then we will hear about the scientific value of collecting and cataloging insects, including documentation of insects precipitous decline. We will end the conference learning what social isolation in a fly can teach us about the health risks of social isolation in humans. Over the next two days, there will be many opportunities to explore insect experiences. I hope you will think about who studies insects and the tremendous value of welcoming a variety of voices and perspectives about insects. I also hope that you will challenge yourself to think about insects from less human-centered perspectives. While we cannot think or feel exactly what an insect thinks or feels, we can recognize ways that insects experience the world similarly to and differently from us. This is an experiment in radical empathy that can enrich our lives in multiple ways. Finally, I hope that you challenge yourselves to think about ethical implications of the many ways that we intersect with insect lives. Our lives are inextricably connected with insects. We cannot live without them. Sometimes we cannot live with them. Insects could live without us, but will they survive us? Welcome to insects. Little body, big impact. Enjoy. This is the last time, I promise. I'd like to welcome to the stage my colleague Hagar Atia in the Department of Communication Studies, who will introduce our first speaker.