Kelly Weinersmith

Kelly Weinersmith (née Smith) is an American biologist, writer, and podcaster.^[1] She is a member of the faculty at Rice University in the Department of BioSciences, and an alumni collaborator with the Parasite Ecology Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[2][3] She is co-author, with her husband Zach Weinersmith, of popular science books Soonish (2017) and A City on Mars (2023).

Weinersmith in 2011

Research

A parasitologist, Weinersmith is the co-discoverer of Euderus set, commonly known as the crypt-keeper wasp.^[4]

Books

• Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything (2017) is a work co-authored with her husband Zach Weinersmith looking at upcoming technologies that could change the future.^{[5][6][7][8][9]} The book made #7 in Science on The New York Times bestsellers in the science book category.^[10]
• A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (2023) is a popular science book on space settlement and challenges facing a potential colonization of Mars, colonization of the Moon, and related activities. In particular, it draws on Weinersmith's experience as an ecologist to study maintaining ecologies off-Earth where the humans in them do not all rapidly perish, a difficult task.^[11] The work made 11th place on The New York Times Best Seller list for all hardback non-fiction books.^[12] It was awarded the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.^[13][14]

Other activities

Weinersmith is co-host of the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe^[15], and regular co-host of the podcast Science... sort of.^[16]

She was a speaker at Smithsonian Magazine's "2015 Future Is Here Festival".^[17]