our parallel universe uptown, the columbia medical school, purportedly home to many md/phds

We’re back with Science Fair, Bwog’s weekly curated list of interesting STEM-related talks, symposiums, and events happening on campus. For science and non-science majors alike, our list will bring you events that will satisfy your scientific curiosity for everything from astronomy to zoology, and everything in between.

For anyone, related-majors and non-majors alike:

  • Columbia Astronomy Public Outreach presents: Signal to Noise Lecture and Performances (Friday, April 6, 8-10pm, Pupin Hall)
    • In [a collaboration between scientists and artists], The Amateur Astronomers Society of Voorhees and Columbia’s Astronomy Public Outreach program present Signal to Noise, an interdisciplinary salon centering on the topic of sounds of the solar system. A talk by a Columbia astronomer, the presentation of sound and video art pieces, and the distribution of a zine will take place in a variety of locations in Columbia’s Pupin Hall—a lecture hall, a library, and a stairwell—and will be followed by public access to the department’s observatory for stargazing.
  • Public Health Week, hosted by Columbia Public Health Club (events on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday evenings and Friday brunch)
    • Events include a discussion on the current state of research on the opioid crisis, an open mic night of student health stories, and a networking brunch with public health professionals. Food provided at all events!
  • Getting the Most Out of Your Summer Science Research Opportunity (Friday, April 6, 1:30-2:30pm, Lerner 401)
    • “Dr. Vesna Gasperov, Undergraduate Science Research Advisor, will discuss how to prepare for your research experience, set realistic expectations, establish strong connections with your lab mentors, and get the most out of your experience” – RSVP here
  • MD/PhD Discussion Panel (Tuesday, April 3, 6pm, Lerner 401)
    • “Our panelists will speak about the preparation for a career as a physician-scientist. They will address common questions, including: Why choose a MD/PhD program? Who is a competitive applicant for combined degree programs? How should students choose programs and schools that are the right fit? Panelists include representatives from Columbia University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai and New York University.” RSVP by emailing preprofessional@columbia.edu

  • Testing the Panacea: Antidotes, Alchemy, and the Problem of Proof in Early Modern Europe (Monday, April 2, 6-7:30pm, Heyman Center Common Room)
    • Part of the Explorations in the Medical Humanities
    • “This talk contrasts the drug testing methods of two sixteenth-century chemical empirics… These cases elucidate the tricky problem of proof and evidence in early modern drug testing.While poison trials were used at princely courts all over Europe and appeared to give a definitive answer, they could also be dismissed as singular tricks.”

For more advanced students of the given subject:

  • “Learning and sleep-depended synaptic plasticity and maintenance,” Department of Biological Sciences Seminar (Monday, April 2, 12pm, 601 Fairchild)
    • Dr. Wen-Biao Gan of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at NYU will give the seminar.
  • “MemComputing: a brain-inspired topological computing paradigm,” Department of Physics Seminar (Wednesday, April 4, 11:30am, 705 Pupin Hall)
    • Talk by Dr. Massimiliano Di Ventra, UCSD – “Which features make the brain such a powerful and energy-efficient computing machine? Can we reproduce them in the solid state, and if so, what type of computing paradigm would we obtain? I will show that a machine that uses memory to both process and store information, like our brain, and is endowed with intrinsic parallelism and information overhead”
  • “Extreme Imaging for Large-Scale Single-Cell Analysis,” Department of Chemistry Seminar (Friday, April 6, 4:15pm, 209 Havemeyer)
    • Talk by Dr. Keisuke Goda, University of Tokyo – “Cellular heterogeneity is a central challenge of biology in which there are cell-to-cell differences even within the same species. Population-averaged measurements of cellular behaviors do not represent the behaviors of any individual cell… In this talk, I present extremely fast molecular imaging technology combined with artificial intelligence on a microfluidic platform for large-scale single-cell analysis.”

columbia medical school via wikipedia