Welcome back to Science Fair, Bwog’s weekly roundup of science events happening around campus. As always, email science@bwog.com if you want your event featured.

The State of the World’s Food System Webinar

  • Monday, February 5, 2024, 8:30 to 9:45 am
  • Online via Zoom. Registration required. 
  • A group of experts from Columbia Climate School, Food and Agriculture United Nations, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Cornell CAS, and more will present the Food Systems Countdown to the 2023 Initiative and its first assessment of the Global Food System. More information here. 

More than the Absence of Disease with Dr. John Beard

  • Monday, February 5, 2024, 1:00 to 2:00 pm
  • Online via Zoom. Registration required.
  • “The Center for Health Policy invites you to “More than the Absence of Disease,” a seminar by Dr. John R. Beard, MBBS, PhD.” More information here. 

February Narrative Medicine Rounds: “My Father’s Brain,” a talk with Dr. Sandeep Jauhar

  • Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 6:00 to 7:00 pm
  • Online via Zoom. Registration required. 
  • “For our first Rounds of the spring semester, we are thrilled to welcome back best-selling author and cardiologist Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, who will speak to us about his latest book, My Father’s Brain, a memoir of his relationship with his father as he succumbed to dementia. In the book, Jauhar sets his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s alongside his own journey toward understanding his father’s disease. My Father’s Brain, named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, and is a Smithsonian top ten science book of 2023, is deeply affecting memoir of a father’s descent into dementia, and a revelatory inquiry into why the human brain degenerates with age and what we can do about it.” More information here. 

Columbia Aging Center Series: Population Geroscience

  • Thursday, February 8, 2024, 12:00 to 1:00 pm
  • Online over Zoom and in-person at 722 West 168th Street, Rosenfield Building, Room 440. Registration required. 
  • “Please join us for this seminar in the Columbia Aging Center Series: […] With a mission of health equity geroscience, Dr. Belsky’s lab’s research sits at the intersection of public health, population & behavioral sciences, and genomics. His studies seek to understand how genes and environments combine to shape health across the life course. The goal of Dan’s work is to reduce social inequalities in aging outcomes in the US and elsewhere.” More information here. 

Music, the Climate Crisis, and the Haitian Drum

  • Thursday, February 8, 2024, 3:00 to 5:00 pm
  • In-person at Fayerweather Hall (Room 513). Registration required.
  • “Speakers will discuss the potential novel approaches to tackling the climate crisis when considering music and in relation to combating global antiblack structures. The Haitian tanbou drum provides a potential site to refigure the value of the environment alongside the insistence on making Black lives matter. Our three invited speakers/performers approach these kinds of questions from distinct disciplines and methodologies spanning the arts, humanities, and sciences.” More information here. 

Climate Justice Series: Segregation and Environmental Injustice

  • Friday, February 9, 2024, 10:00 to 11:30 am
  • Online over Zoom and in-person at the Center on Global Energy Policy (First Floor). Registration required. 
  • “‘Segregation and Environmental Injustice’ will integrate hard data and social sciences to frame environmental injustice in India as essentially caste injustice. Participants will be able to make connections with similar perspectives around questions of racial justice in climate change policies in the United States, particularly as this discussion will also include an introduction to Ava DuVernay’s new feature film Origin, adapted from Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste, on global systems of hierarchy, oppression, and access to resources.” The event will feature ecological economist Dr. Deepak Malghan, sociologist  Dr. Gaurav Pathania, and Dr. Anupama Rao, director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the convenor of the Ambedkar Initiative. More information here. 

Twisted Helix: Can Public-Private Partnerships in Large-Scale Genomic Projects Be Fair and Equitable?

  • Friday, February 9, 2024, 12:00 to 1:00 pm
  • Online over Zoom. Registration required.
  • “Biotechnological innovation almost always entails all three strands of the triple helix: academia, government, and industry. This is increasingly true for large scale genomics and biomedical research projects such as the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium, and the Earth BioGenome, Human Cell Atlas, and BRAINshare projects, which include commercial uses of data and samples. Five decades after biotechnology became a Big Thing in Silicon Valley, both Cambridges, and elsewhere, concerns about pricing and access to health goods and services breed skepticism that the innovation ecosystem is fair and equitable. This event will discuss several concrete cases in which public-private partnerships have raised ethical issues and address whether and how ELSI scholars might be useful in making the system more transparent, fair, and trustworthy.” More information here.

Science Fair via Giovanni De La Rosa