- Contact Ann Bolek at (330) 972-6264 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by noon on Friday, March 12.  Dinner costs are $18 members and $5 for students.  Dinner reservations made after the deadline will be put on a waiting list. 

- The program is free and open to the public.

ACESS is an umbrella organization for twelve professional societies in the Akron area.  This meeting is a great chance to network with other science and engineering professionals.  Click here  to go to the ACESS website. 

Linda Spurlock is Director of Human Health at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.   She has a successful career as a forensic artist and scientific illustrator.  She is skilled in the art of forensic facial reconstruction, creating sculptures and drawings of people whose bones are all that remain to give clues to their identity, and has worked on a number of police investigations.  Her scientific illustrations have appeared in Scientific American, National Geographic and many other publications.

Spurlock received her doctorate in biomedical anthropology from Kent State University (2001).  She holds Master of Arts degrees in Teaching (1992) and in Anthropology (1986).  Spurlock is also a professional archaeologist, and recently co-edited, with Olaf H. Prufer and Thomas R. Pigott, a book on the role of prehistoric caves and rock shelters of Ohio.  Caves and Culture: 10,000 Years of Ohio History was published in 2006 by Kent State University Press.

Spurlock has taught human anatomy to medical students at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown, Ohio, and forensic anthropology at Kent State University.  She helped design and teach a forensic anthropology field course at The University of Akron.  Most recently, she taught human anatomy and physiology, as well as environmental science, at Stark State College, where she won the college's 2007-2008 Distinguished Teacher Award.

Spurlock explains how she first became a scientific illustrator and how some of her art projects further heightened her interest in the natural world and forensics.  Examples of her drawings and forensic facial reconstructions are provided.  She concludes with the tale of her role in the reconstruction of the Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi) skeleton.  This creature, and its place in the story of human evolution, was voted to be the most important scientific discovery of 2009 by the editors of Science magazine.