The Story of
Lauren Esposito
In 2018, Arachnologist Dr. Lauren Esposito founded 500 Queer Scientists, a powerful visibility campaign that advocates for and celebrates the visibility of LGBTQ+ professionals and academicians in STEM.
Her campaign enables queer scientists to emerge from the shadows of heteronormative culture in science, to see each other, and to be seen by the world for their STEM achievements and advances. For founding 500 Queer Scientists Lauren Esposito was awarded the 2019 Walt Westman Award by the National Organisation of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP).
A single scorpion’s DNA can code for 200 different venoms. Venoms are protein cocktails and depending on the scenario, and the predator or the prey, scorpions eject venoms of different composition.
Growing up, Esposito stored insects in egg cartons and hermit crabs in buckets, and today, she studies the evolution of scorpions and their venoms, as one of the very few scorpion taxonomists in the world. She is also the Assistant Curator of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences.
The Caribbeans are a biodiversity hotspot and offer the ideal conditions to study the biodiversity of arachnids. Dr. Esposito has led extensive research projects in the Caribbean and believes that these islands had a significant impact on the biodiversity found amongst North and South American scorpions and other arachnids.
Scorpions are essentially “living fossils”, and it is by examining the populations of scorpions in the Caribbeans in a time of rapid agricultural progress that this biodiversity can be preserved for future generations.
Aside from being an arachnologist and a queer visibility activist, Dr. Esposito is also the co-founder of Island & Seas, a non-profit that supports research and education in Baja, Mexico. Island & Seas aims to employ scientific ventures and ecotourism to aid sustainable development and nature conservation in the region.
In a world where people in STEM continue to face exclusion due to their sexual and/or gender identities, Dr. Esposito is a much needed scientist, activist, and educator, and her campaign comes as a relief in a culture of queer misrepresentation, with one clear message: you matter, you exist.
“But as a queer scientist, I felt isolated, and that stems from a culture in academia that promotes a straight environment, so to speak. It makes it—not necessarily impossible but uncomfortable to come out.”