DECODING THE BOOK OF LIFE
The H.Dudley Wright Foundation dedicated the 2016 edition of the Wright Colloquia for Science to genomics, the study of how life functions at the genome level. Four public lectures featuring neuroscientists, geneticists, biologists and philosophers helped to better understand the tremendous impact of genomic decoding on personalized medicine, its decisive contribution in confirming the belonging of the human species to the great apes group, and the challenges for the future that inevitably arise from the ‘improvement’ of humans.
Year: 2016
DECODING THE BOOK OF LIFE – The Genomic Revolution
The H.Dudley Wright Foundation dedicated the 2016 edition of the Wright Colloquia for Science to genomics, the study of how life functions at the genome level. Four public lectures featuring neuroscientists, geneticists, biologists and philosophers helped to better understand the tremendous impact of genomic decoding on personalized medicine, its decisive contribution in confirming the belonging of the human species to the great apes group, and the challenges for the future that inevitably arise from the ‘improvement’ of humans.
Speakers
Linda Buck, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014
Understanding the mysteries of smell by seeing through the brain →
Michael Snyder, Director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine
Medicine will become a data-driven science →
Svante Pääbo, Director of the Genetics Department at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig
I seek to identify what makes modern humans unique →
Peter Sloterdijk, Professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
We have always eliminated superhumans →
Events
For this 17th colloquium, young people from Geneva schools were honored. For a full day, they were able to visit the Faculty of Science laboratories and exchange with scientists on these fundamental questions surrounding the operating instructions of life.
These meetings between scientists and the general public were punctuated by several evening projections which, during a tremendous sound and light show followed by 37,000 spectators, transformed the facade of the Bastions building into an extraordinary journey to the heart of life.
There is no doubt that this 17th Colloquium allowed the greatest number to understand how much the genomic revolution is a major and decisive advance in understanding life and in the ability that science now has to make humans ‘improvable’.