Emily Graslie is the host of the Youtube channel The Brain Scoop and works at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois as their Chief Curiosity Correspondent.

Background

Emily's speech "From Landscapes to Taxidermy" is her own telling of her beginnings in art and how she became involved in science.

Emily grew up in South Dakota. Her family had moved there around 1913 to homestead some land near Faith, SD. Her mother was a prominent doctor where she lived, notably being the first woman doctor in the town to deliver a baby as the acting physician. The strenuous nature of her mother's work turned Emily away from the sciences, despite her fervent love of animals, and she attended the University of Montana intending to double major in Violin Performance and Studio Art. She would eventually drop the Violin Performance major due to time constraints, but kept up her violin playing as part of the UM Symphony for the entirety of her undergraduate degree.

During her senior year at UM, she was introduced to the Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum on campus by friends. She immediately wanted to make use of the zoological museum in her art degree, and began using the museum's specimens as models to draw. Emily arranged for an independent study in scientific illustration, overseen by the museum's lone curator.

Throughout the independent study, Emily familiarized herself with the processes of the museum. She became involved with much of the museums operations, including cleaning and preparing specimens and managing the catalog. Drawing the specimens also led to her greatly increasing her knowledge of zoology in general. Emily graduated from the University of Montana in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

After graduating, she stayed on with the zoological museum as a volunteer and continued to become more involved with the processes there. She began coordinating community outreach to both bring awareness to the museum's existence, and bring its usefulness to a larger audience, including giving tours of the museum and organizing shows. She then became a TA for the university's class on Vertebrate Osteology.

Eventually Emily decided to focus her life more on zoology. This involved quitting a job she held as a baker and applying to Johns Hopkins University's Museum Studies masters programs.

During the summer of 2012, the zoological museum was visited by Hank Green to film part of the Crash Course episode on the skeletal system. Emily had been a long-time nerdfighter at this point, and while there, Hank floated the idea of her eventually appearing in videos for SciShow or Vlogbrothers. The Crash Course episode was posted on August 20, 2012.

The Brain Scoop

On December 7, 2012, Hank Green posted a video of a tour Emily had given him to the Vlogbrothers channel. He then offered to help Emily create her own Youtube series, titled The Brain Scoop, co-produced by Hank Green and Michael Aranda. The Brain Scoop posted several teaser videos throughout December before officially launching on January 14, 2013. Emily's videos provided virtual tours of the Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum, and often discussed specific museum specimens and showed the museum's process of taking in a specimen. Around this time she also began hosting episodes of SciShow.

In April of that year, Emily attended Chicago's Field Museum to film an event. While there, she was given a three day behind-the-scenes tour which culminated in her being offered a job as their Chief Curiosity Correspondent. She left the University of Montana and moved to Chicago, and as of August 21, 2013's video, The Brain Scoop began operating out of Chicago and filming the Field Museum of Natural History.

Women in STEM

Emily posted on January 27, 2013, about comments she had received critiquing her appearance. Later, on November 27, 2013, Emily posted a video to The Brain Scoop addressing the gender divide of Youtube STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) channels. She talked of the sexism and misogyny she receives in the comments to her videos, how males hosting similar channels do not experience this, and the need to make STEM education (on Youtube and elsewhere) a less derisive place for women. Her video gained massive attention and was featured NPR, Yahoo News, and a variety of other news outlets and blogs.

Nerdfighteria & Present

Emily was part of the nerdfighter community back in the days of Brotherhood 2.0, and first met Hank Green when he visited the zoological museum to film an episode of Crash Course. She later appeared in several videos by Hank for hankschannel, hankgames and vlogbrothers. She attended VidCon in 2013, and was a co-host of the 2012 and 2013 Projects for Awesome. On November 17, 2013, she launched her vlog channel ehmteevee. She continues to host The Brain Scoop from Chicago's Field Museum while working on her masters degree from Johns Hopkins University.

External Links
The Brain Scoop on Youtube
EhmTeeVee on Youtube
Emily Graslie on Wikipedia
Emily Graslie on Twitter
The Brain Scoop on Tumblr
Emily Graslie on Tumblr