A massive fire in the Estonia Mine in 1988 kicked off a series of events that are hard to track nearly fifty years later. A team of microbiologists, historians, and geographers came together to figure out how Soviet Estonian scientists treated the toxic spill of phenol from the mine with human-engineered microbes. This is the only known release of GMO bacteria in a natural environment in the world. Few people in Estonia are willing to talk about the event. Archives are limited, and most are inaccessible. Microbes, however, helped us piece together the story.

Date: Monday, May 4th, 2026
Time: 4 pm
Location: TBD
Presenters: Kate Brown (MIT), Yonatan Chemla (MIT), Victoria Chen (MIT), Danhue Kim (MIT), Aro Velmet (UCLA), Linda Kaljundi (Tallinn Arts Academy), Anu Printsman (University of Tallinn), and Anna Helena Liiv (University of Tallinn)