Beaty Biodiversity Museum, UBC

Curator of permanent vertebrate exhibits

UBC's rich biological collections are housed in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, a new public museum opened in the fall of 2010.

The museum is unusual in that it houses the UBC's research collections while also opening those same collections up to the public. Visitors have the opportunity to look into actual storage units and meander through the maze of cabinets housing 500,000 specimens of plants, algae, and fungi, 600,000 specimens of bugs, beetles, and butterflies, more shells that you could count, 40,000 specimens of land vertebrates, 800,000 fish specimens, and over 20,000 fossils from around the world.

I was in charge of the vertebrate exhibits—that is, anything with a backbone. My responsibilities included researching, writing, and designing over 200 exhibits exploring all aspects of life with a backbone.