Carla Lalli Music to Deliver Keynote Remarks for W&L’s Science, Society, and the Arts Conference The award-winning cookbook author will deliver a public talk on March 20, with student research presentations on March 21.

By Emily Innes
March 14, 2025

Washington and Lee University’s Science, Society, and the Arts (SSA) Conference will take place Thursday, March 20, and Friday, March 21. The two-day event will showcase original research from undergraduate students and feature a keynote address from chef and cookbook author Carla Lalli Music.

The SSA conference provides W&L students with a unique opportunity to present their academic work to the broader campus community through research posters, presentations, performance and visual arts showcases, and small-group discussions. This year’s theme is “Unlikely Pairings,” which emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the conference and encourages students to consider how their research interests might pair with their passions outside of academics.

“W&L students are often involved in exciting projects or interested in academic research that they talk about in interviews and put on their resumes, but they don’t have the chance to share their work with their peers,” said Stephanie Dücker ’26, SSA general chair. “SSA provides students the opportunity to practice discussing the academic work they’re excited about in a formal setting. On the flip side, SSA gives audience members the chance to hear what their peers are working on and the ways that academic research can be, unexpectedly, personal.”

Programming kicks off with Music’s keynote address on March 20 at 5 p.m. in the University Chapel. This event is free and open to the public, and no tickets are required.

Music is the New York Times bestselling author of the cookbook “That Sounds So Good,” and received a James Beard Award for her first cookbook, “Where Cooking Begins.” She is the former food director at Bon Appetit, where she hosted the YouTube show “Back To Back Chef” and appeared in many other test kitchen videos. Music has produced and hosted almost 200 episodes of “Carla’s Cooking Show” on her YouTube channel. She writes the “Food Processing” Substack newsletter and launched her podcast, “Worst Day of Your Life So Far” in 2024. The Brooklyn-based chef is currently working on her third cookbook, slated for release in the spring of 2026.

Student presentations will take place on March 21, and undergraduate classes will be canceled to encourage students to attend their peers’ sessions. Students will present their research in “unlikely pairs” during the four breakout sessions throughout the day, with each one-hour block featuring two students speaking on “opposite” subjects back-to-back; for example, one block will feature a student presenting her biochemistry research followed by a political science presentation. Poster presentations will be on view in the Science Center Atrium, with two-hour sessions at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. that allow students to discuss their research with their peers, faculty and staff.

Conference attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in book club discussions during the Tom Wolfe Seminars offered at 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Held in collaboration with W&L’s Office of Lifelong Learning, the seminars will discuss Jayne Phillips’ “Night Watch,” which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is the selection for this year’s Tom Wolfe Weekend on April 11-12.

The full conference schedule will be available on the SSA website.