Honors College
University Forum Speaker Schedule
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In 2025, University Forum will continue the half-century long tradition of bringing incredible speakers to the University and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Honors College with Southern Miss alumnus Russell Moore as its first speaker.
Registration is not required and all Forum events are free and open to the public. We are happy, however, to send you a reminder email (that will include an easy-to-use link to attend virtually).
All fall 2025 Forum events will be held in person in the Thad Cochran Center Grand Ballroom on the Hattiesburg Campus. Most Forum events are also available through a livestream broadcast. Links to live events will be posted below the speaker’s bio on the day of the event. (Live streams of Forum events are offered as a courtesy; unfortunately, we cannot guarantee the quality of the live stream and cannot take questions from the online audience. If you are a student and your instructor requires proof of attendance, you must attend the in-person event to have your attendance recorded.)
If you require a sign language translator or any other accessibility accommodations, please contact University Forum at forumFREEMississippi at least one week prior to the event.
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Spring 2026 Speaker Schedule
Carl Zimmer
New York Times columnist and author
February 10, 2026
6:30 p.m.
Bennett Auditorium
Carl Zimmer is an award-winning New York Times columnist, bestselling author, and one of the most respected science journalists today. During the Covid-19 pandemic, his reporting was part of the team coverage that won The New York Times a Pulitzer Prize in 2021. Renowned for his engaging storytelling, he has written fifteen acclaimed books, including Life’s Edge and She Has Her Mother’s Laugh. In his latest book, Air-Borne, Zimmer uncovers the hidden world of the air we breathe, teeming with invisible life and unseen dangers. He takes readers through the history of aerobiology, from Louis Pasteur’s discovery of airborne germs to the overlooked pioneers who warned about airborne infections long before the Covid-19 pandemic. Zimmer is an adjunct professor in Yale University’s Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, where he teaches writing and biology.
Jill Sonke
US Cultural Policy Fellow with Stanford University
March 24, 2026
6:30 p.m.
Bennett Auditorium
Jill Sonke, PhD, is a US Cultural Policy Fellow with Stanford University, with appointments as a visiting scholar at the National Academy of Medicine and Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She is also Co-director of the EpiArts Lab, a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab in partnership with University College London, and Director of Research Initiatives and a Research Professor in the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida (UF).
Dr. Sonke served during the pandemic as a senior advisor to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Vaccine Confidence and Demand Team on the COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Task Force, and served from 2021-2025 as Director of National Research and Impact for the One Nation/One Project initiative. She currently serves on the steering committee and as an Affiliated Researcher in the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, established by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Steinhardt School at New York University, Community Jameel, and CULTURUNNERS, and as an editorial board member for Health Promotion Practice journal.
With 30+ years of experience and leadership in the field of arts in health and a PhD
in arts in public health from Ulster University in Northern Ireland, Jill is active
in research and policy advocacy nationally and internationally. She is an artist,
cultural strategist, and mixed methods researcher with a focus on the arts and public
health. She is the recipient of a New Forms Florida Fellowship Award, a State of Florida
Individual Artist Fellowship Award, a NISOD Excellence in Teaching Award, a UF Internationalizing
the Curriculum Award, a UF Most Outstanding Service Learning Faculty Award, a UF Public
Health Champions award, a UF Cross-Campus Faculty Entrepreneur of the Year Award,
and over 350 grants for her programs and research at the University of Florida.
Steven Strogatz
Applied Mathematician
April 14, 2026
6:30 p.m.
Bennett Auditorium
Dr. Steven Strogatz is an applied mathematician who works in the areas of nonlinear dynamics and complex systems, often on topics inspired by the curiosities of everyday life such as synchronously flashing fireflies and coordinated applause. A professor at Cornell University, he is author of The Joy of X, The Calculus of Friendship, Infinite Powers, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, and Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, and is co-host of Quanta Magazine’s The Joy of Why podcast. His work on collective dynamics has been considered foundational to interdisciplinary applications of complex networks in epidemiology, business, physics, and sociology.
Fall 2025 Speaker Schedule
Russell Moore
Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, USM alumnus
September 9, 2025
6:30 p.m.
Thad Cochran Center Grand Ballroom
Russell Moore is Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. An alumnus of USM and an ordained Baptist minister, Moore served previously as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and as the provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he taught theology and ethics.
Nina Tandon
Human tissue repair / Entrepreneur / Biomedical engineer
October 21, 2025
6:30 p.m.
Thad Cochran Center Grand Ballroom
Nina Tandon is the CEO and co-founder of Epibone, a business for growing artificial tissues, like hearts and bones, that can be safely put into the body. Nina Tandon is leading the charge of biology’s industrial revolution by overseeing the world’s first company growing living human bone for skeletal reconstruction. She is a senior fellow at the Lab for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering at Columbia and currently serves as an adjunct professor of Electrical Engineering at Cooper Union.
Dava Sobel
Author of Longitude
November 4, 2025
6:30 p.m.
Thad Cochran Center Grand Ballroom
Dava Sobel is the author of the international bestseller Longitude, the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist Galileo’s Daughter, The Planets, A More Perfect Heaven, And the Sun Stood Still, and The Glass Universe, and co-author of The Illustrated Longitude. She is the recipient of the Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board, the Bradford Washburn Award, the Kumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. A former New York Times science reporter, and currently editor of the “Meter” poetry column in Scientific American, she lives on Long Island.