Michael S. Engel is Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Senior Curator of Entomology at the University of Kansas. He is a leading researcher in the field of insect paleontology and evolutionary biology. He received his B.Sc. in Physiology and Cell Biology and B.A. in Chemistry from the University of Kansas (1993) and Ph.D. (1998) in Entomology from Cornell University. After a two-year appointment as Research Scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, where he worked on the fossil history of bees preserved in amber, he joined the faculty at the University of Kansas.