Raven Capone Benko is a science communicator specializing in marine systems, climate change, and the human-nature relationship. She has worked for the Smithsonian several times, first as a science writing intern, then as a government relations fellow focusing on science policy, and again as a media specialist for the Pettibone Legacy Project in the NMNH Department of Invertebrate Zoology. She finished her master’s in 2021 at the University of Washington studying how different groups of people engage with climate change science and policies. In her free time, she teaches partner dancing and reads as many fun and frivolous books that she can get her hands on.
Learn about Violet Dandridge, Aime Motter Awl, Carolyn Bartlett Gast, and Marilyn Schotte: four women from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Department of Invertebrate Zoology who broke through the gendered barriers of science and made significant contributions to scientific discovery through art.
The first female curator in the National Museum of Natural History Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Dr. Pettibone described 172 species and fought for the recognition of women in science.
Smithsonian marine scientist Brett Gonzalez spent 10 days exploring the flooded caves of the Turks and Caicos in search of a rare predatory scale worm.
For years, the dangerous virus currently making global headlines was circulating in wild animals, replicating and spreading with little notice from the host that carried it. This virus, that scientists now believe originated in bats, quickly turned from a benign hitchhiker to a deadly producer of disease when it was introduced to an animal population it had never come in contact with before – humans.
From teaching curious museumgoers to adding creativity to the scientific process, art is an essential component of the science done at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.