October 18, 2016 Skeptics in the Pub Downtown + Café Scientifique

Our next Skeptics in the Pub night will be a combined event with Café Scientifique in Yagger’s back room, at 433 W. Pender St. Instead of our usual social event, this month there will be a presentation by Harvard’s Dr. Ting Wu, followed by a Q&A session. After the Q&A session feel free to stick around for our usual socializing with drinks and conversation. You may want to show up early to get a good seat.

Title: At the Intersection of Space and Genetics

Biography: Ting (C.-ting) Wu, Ph.D., is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. She is also the Director of the Consortium for Space Genetics, the Director of the Personal Genetics Education (pgEd.org) Project, and a recipient of an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. Her laboratory investigates how chromosome organization influences genome function, inventing and applying technologies for imaging the genome as well as studying how a very puzzling set of sequences, called ultraconserved elements (UCEs), have managed to resist change for a stunning 300 million years. These studies have led her group to consider the potential of their findings for protecting astronauts from the extreme conditions of long-term travel in space. The Wu laboratory also houses the Personal Genetics Education Project, which works to raise public awareness and discourse regarding personal genetics, aiming to make that awareness equal across all communities, regardless of socioeconomic, ethnic, educational, and religious influences.