The Life Science (LS) Series offers events that showcase advances in biology. Topics include how organisms change through time and interact with their environment, animal behavior, the brain, genetics, and technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology.
Previous LS events have covered gene patenting, the BRAIN Initiative, chimpanzee behavior, dinosaurs, aquatic life, and antibiotic discovery, among other topics.
Distinguished speakers have included Neil Shubin, Ph.D., Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, and host of “Your Inner Fish” on PBS; John Maunsell, Ph.D., Alfred D Lasker Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago and the Director of the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology and Human Behavior; and Katherine A. Barsness, M.D. M.S., Director of Surgical Simulation, Director of Surgical Outcomes Research Attending Physician, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago Assistant Professor of Surgery Director of Outreach, Center for Education in Medicine, Department of Medical Education Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
This event is a screening of the award-winning documentary Rise of the Warrior Apes, featuring a question and answer session with collaborating scientist Dr. John Mitani.
“Filmed over 23 years, Rise of the Warrior Apes tells the epic story of an extraordinary troop of chimpanzees in Ngogo, Uganda – featuring four mighty warriors who rule through moral ambiguity, questionable politics, strategic alliances, and destroyed trust. Continue reading “Film Screening: Rise of the Warrior Apes”
Chimpanzees and their sister species, the bonobo, are humankind’s closest living relatives. Because of this close evolutionary relationship, chimpanzees provide a model system to evaluate claims about human uniqueness. Continue reading “What Makes Us Human? Lessons from the Study of Wild Chimpanzees”
The Leakey Foundation, Chicago Council on Science and Technology and Chicago Public Library present
The Origins of the Genus Homo
When did our ancestors look the way we expect the earliest members of our genus to have looked? Continue reading “The Origins of the Genus Homo”
Every human carries a unique individual genome. The ways in which human genomes are similar or different to one another is just now being detailed at high resolution thanks to technological advances in DNA sequencing. These new observations reveal much about our origins as humans and the evolutionary processes that shape both human adaptation and disease. Continue reading “Genes and Geography: Understanding Human Genetic Diversity”
Continue reading “Alesi: The Life, Death, and Discovery of an Ancestor”
The discovery that a microorganism produced penicillin in 1928 ushered in an unprecedented global effort to mine for new antibiotics from the environment, in particular from microorganisms that live in soil. It remains one of the most impactful scientific discoveries in our species’ history, as it resulted in nearly doubling our life span. Continue reading “Antibiotic Hunters: Discovering Drugs in the Ocean”
