Venue: California Academy of Sciences
Address: 55 Music Concourse Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118
Town: San Francisco, US

The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The academy began in 1853 as a learned society and still carries out a large amount of original research. The institution is located in Golden Gate Park on the West Side of San Francisco. Completely rebuilt in 2008, the academy's primary building in Golden Gate Park covers 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2). In early 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the California Academy of Sciences had around 500 employees and an annual revenue of about $33 million. The California Academy of Sciences, California's oldest operating museum and research institution for the natural sciences, is governed by a 41-member board of trustees who are nominated and chosen by the California Academy of Sciences Fellows. The Academy Fellows are in turn, "[n]ominated by their colleagues and appointed by the Board of Trustees...the Fellows remain members of the Fellowship for life." The board of trustees is then responsible for appointing the executive management of the academy, who in turn are responsible for overseeing the academy's overall operation and the hiring of its other managers and employees. === Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability (IBSS) === Besides its function as a source of public science education through its museum, the California Academy of Sciences also operates the Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability (IBSS) as its research arm, conducting research in the fields of taxonomy, phylogenetics, and biodiversity studies. Although some aspects of IBSS collections and research are available for viewing by museum patrons at the "Hidden Wonders" exhibit, most of the research happens in laboratories and facilities, "behind the scenes", and not observable by the public. In fact, unbeknownst to most patrons, research and administrative facili