Beth Shapiro wants to know how we can bring back the woolly mammoth. And the dodo. And the Tasmanian tiger.
As an evolutionary biologist and chief science officer at Colossal Biosciences, Shapiro is advancing the company’s mission of de-extinction. This isn’t Jurassic Park, though. It’s taking steps to bring back species that can survive our current world and to use these same tools to protect other species moving forward.
“What I like about the mission is it’s a moonshot,” Shapiro says. “If we say, ‘We want to make a mammoth,’ that means that we have to explicitly write down all of the technical, ethical, and ecological challenges that need to be solved in order to get there.”
Those steps are the first ones toward adapting at-risk species to rapidly changing habitats around the world.
This role was an unexpected step in a career full of unexpected opportunities. Shapiro came to UGA as a broadcast journalism major before switching to ecology with a geology minor, giving a path to follow her passion for scientific communication.
At Oxford, Shapiro met New Zealand evolutionary biologist Alan Cooper and learned about ancient DNA, or DNA that’s extracted from ancient materials like bones, plant remains, and sediments.
“I’d studied biology and worked as an ecologist and was interested in storytelling,” she says. “And I saw this as an amalgamation of all these things—evolutionary biology, geology, going back in time, and thinking about how ecosystems change.”
While unexpected, Shapiro wouldn’t be where she is today without accepting a few risks and taking on any opportunities that came her way.
“A lot of people assume that we have some special moment when we’re 4 that defines everything we do for the rest of our life,” Shapiro says. “That certainly isn’t me, and I think it probably isn’t most people. When confronted with an opportunity, I say take it.”
