March 2018
Dan Hirschman – The Stylized Facts of Inequality
This workshop series is primarily designed to assist advanced graduate students with their ongoing research projects. The workshop aims to expose participants to original approaches to social studies of science and technology, but also to expose students to solutions to common challenges of academic work.
Find out more »Gail Geller – Genomic Discoveries in Infectious Disease: Anticipating the Ethical Implications for Marginalized Populations
Advances in genomics are contributing to the development of more effective approaches to the prevention, treatment and control of infectious diseases (IDs). In this talk, Geller will describe the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSIs) of recent discoveries in host and pathogen genomics relevant to HIV and Hepatitis C, paying particular attention to the needs and concerns of marginalized populations.
Find out more »Shahid Naeem – From Forager to Farmer in 200,000 Years: An Environmental Sustainability Perspective Lunch Discussion
Join Professor Shahid Naeem for a lunchtime discussion exploring niche construction through social, humanist, and agro-scientific perspectives to shed light on issues of sustainable food and farming. Open to all Columbia University affiliates.
Find out more »Margaret S. Livingstone: What Art Can Tell Us About the Brain
In this lecture, Margaret S. Livingstone, Takeda Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, will examine how major works of art provide insight into how we see, how artists have figured out how our brains extract relevant information about faces and objects, and why learning disabilities may be associated with artistic talent.
Find out more »Rachel Rothschild – Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution
Rachel Rothschild's Poisonous Skies is the untold story of how acid rain changed ideas about the threat fossil fuels posed to the global environment, the attempts of the coal industry to discredit scientific research on the problem, and how we might learn from acid rain's history to better approach environmental threats like climate change.
Find out more »Impairment in the Social World: A Graduate Student Conference on Disability
Believing that disability is a meaningful social category worthy of inquiry, this conference was organized to investigate the role of impairment in shaping the social world and the lives of individuals.
Find out more »Fifth Annual Humanities Institute Symposium: Plant Intelligence
What is Plant Intelligence? Current advances in research shed new light on the remarkable interior life of plants. German forester Peter Wohlleben and Italian plant physiologist Stefano Mancuso explore the question of plant intelligence using biological evidence to challenge our common perception of plants and nature.
Find out more »Eric Himmel – Santiago Ramón y Cajal: The Artist as Scientist
Eric Himmel, Editor-in-Chief of Abrams Books and Beautiful Brain catalogue essayist, will trace Cajal’s path from a failed provincial artist through his midlife encounter with neuroscience—which inspired his revolutionary drawings based in new forms and new concepts.
Find out more »Music Theory and Music Cognition: A Conference in Honor of Fred Lerdahl
A conference organized in his honor by the Department of Music at Columbia University will present recent work based on and related to the theoretical work of Fred Lerdahl as well as its applicability to various areas of research and musical practice.
Find out more »Graham Roberts – Augmented Reality
Brown Institute, Columbia University Graham Roberts, Director of Immersive Platforms Storytelling and Co-Director of the Virtual Reality Program for NYTVR, New York Times This is perhaps our most experimental event in terms of “distance” from journalistic practice. Augmented reality (AR) provides a view of an event or phenomenon that is enhanced, “augmented,” with computer-generated elements, perhaps responding to sensor input (sound, video of the event, GPS coordinates) or triggers computed through computer vision tools operating on the scene. A mobile…
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