Kelly Weinersmith is an American biologist, writer, and podcaster. She is a member of the faculty at Rice University in the Department of BioSciences, and an alumni collaborator with the Parasite Ecology Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Her research has been featured in The Atlantic, National Geographic, BBC World, Science, Nature, and more. Kelly co-wrote the New York Times bestselling popular science books Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/Or Ruin Everything and A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?. A City on Mars won a Hugo in 2024 and was short-listed for the 2023 LA Times Book Prize in Science and Technology and the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Book Prize. Her new podcast, Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe, updates on Tuesdays and Thursdays and is produced by iHeart.