PWN Vienna - April General Meeting

How We Outsmart Evolution

 We can not expect evolution to care about people´s survival. If we want to survive, we have to do it ourselves. For the first time in 70,000 years, man was able to think something that does not exist. What sounds banal is the birth of human culture and the starting signal for a series of inventions that have shaped mankind and not just changed it for the better. SHe invents myths, religions, invents language, money and racism. Now human is on the brink of her/his greatest invention: her- and himself. For science enables her/him to continue her/his own evolution. Renée Schroeder looks back on the short time that human has lived so far, makes a trip to her/his genetics and calls for a new enlightenment. She questions, "We are able to reinvent ourselves due to manipulation of our genomes, BUT do we really know what we are doing?"

 About Renée:  

Mag. Renée Schroeder studied biochemistry at the University of Vienna and did her post docs in Munich, Paris and Albany New York on catalytic RNAs (ribonucleic acid). Since 2005, she is head of the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories of the University of Vienna. Her research focus is to understand "how non-coding RNAs regulate gene expression at the level of transcription". She writes popular science books and is editor in chief of journal RNA Biology. Her latest book is "The Invention of Mankind. How we outsmart Evolution".

 We look forward to seeing you there,

Gisela Ebermayer Minich 

PWN Vienna Co-President