Egenis, Centre for the study of Life Sciences
Research centresEgenis, the Centre for the Study of Life SciencesActivitiesEvents

Events

Further events of interest can be found in the College of Social Sciences and International Studies events calendar.

Past Egenis events can be found here.

WhenTimeDescriptionAdd to your calendar
24 April 202412:30

IDSAI/Business School Research Seminar: 'Collaboration and Conflict in Human-Human and Human-Machine Teams' with Professor Taha Yasseri

IDSAI/Business School Seminar. Full details		 Add event
25 April 202414:00

Joint IDSAI/GSI Early Career Lightning Talks

We are excited to welcome you to the first ECR collaborative lightning talks event with IDSAI and GSI. Please sign up to either come along or talk on your research, recent publication, new areas for collaboration or anything else related to being an ECR. Each talk will be allocated 3-5 minutes!! There will be pizza!!:. Full details		 Add event
29 April 202413:30

SCI Project Showcase Series: Does Increasing Public Spending in Health Improve Health?

This project seeks to estimate the causal impacts of public health spending on individual health outcomes in Brazil. It studies a major health reform in Brazil in which municipalities were mandated to spend 15% of their revenue on health. Collecting microdata covering 5,507 Brazilian municipalities over 12 years, this project finds that the large increases in spending resulted in increased availability of hospitals and health professionals, greater individual access to primary care, and improvements in certain health outcomes such as infant mortality, with less evidence suggesting improvements in adult mortality.. Full details		 Add event
29 April 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "Tactical reporting, actionability and uncertainty in the genomic clinic ", Prof Adam Hedgecoe (Cardiff University)

Drawing on ethnographic observations in over 290 clinical team meetings and covering a range of conditions from inherited heart disease, cancer, developmental delays and dysmorphia, this paper seeks to explore professional decision making around clinical genomic sequencing. With a specific focus on decisions about a particular kind of ambiguous result – called Variants of Uncertain Significance (VUS) – this paper examines the role of the perceived ‘actionability’ of specific genomic results. The key insight centres on the way in which clinicians’ beliefs about how parents will react to a result feed back into decisions about the status of such ambiguous results, builds on previous STS work around actionability from Nicole Nelson, Alberto Cambrosio and Stefan Timmermans. Full details		 Add event
2 May 202416:00

SCI Project Showcase Series: Gene Drive Mosquitoes

Gene drive mosquitoes is a short documentary film that is beautifully shot in Uganda and explores Ugandan stakeholders’ hopes for gene drive mosquitoes – a radical new tool that offers a way to eliminate the mosquitoes that cause malaria. Uganda could be one of the first countries in the world to release this type of technology and malaria is the main cause of death in Uganda, so the stakes are high. The film builds on social science research at the University of Exeter and Makerere University in Uganda and shows the complexity of governing this technology. Following the film, Chris Opesen (Makerere University, Uganda) and Sarah Hartley (Exeter) will answer questions and facilitate discussion. Chris will also be available to talk about other global health topics he is working on. Funding to bring Chris to Exeter is from the Exeter’s Sub-Saharan Africa Partnership Development Fund. Film producers: Sarah Hartley and Tom Law (@tomlawsays). Full details		 Add event
13 May 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "Themes from Inference and Representation" Prof Mauricio Suarez (Complutense University of Madrid)

I review some of the main themes in the book I just published for University of Chicago Press, entitled Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science. I focus in particular on the emergence of the modeling attitude in 19th century science and the claimed use of models in practice, with special emphasis on theoretical models in physics and evolutionary biology. I extract some of the consequences of taking an inferential deflationary approach to modeling and discuss some implications for the realism-antirealism debate. Full details		 Add event
20 May 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "When Infant Mortality Was Born: Dutch Preventive Child Health Care without the State, 1890-1930", Martijn van der Meer & Noortje Jacobs (Erasmus MC)

This talk investigates the emergence of Dutch preventive child health care in the first decades of the twentieth century. It shows that the rise of collective action on this terrain followed from the recognition of “infant mortality” as a public problem—a late nineteenth-century configuration that went hand in hand with the professionalization of paediatrics.. Full details		 Add event
3 June 202415:30

EGENIS seminar Dr Milena Ivanova (University of Cambridge)

Title, Abstract and registration details to follow. Full details		 Add event
10 June 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "Rethinking Epidemic Narratives: Combining Historical and Ecological Methods in the Anthropocene", Dr Emily Webster (Durham University)

From spillover diseases to re-emerging infections to rising rates of antimicrobial resistance, microbes have proliferated daily conversation in recent years. These serious and continuing threats to human and nonhuman health fly in the face of triumphalist narratives of epidemiological transition and global disease eradication (Bellamy Foster et al., 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the extent to which these human-microbial interactions are mediated by ecological change widely construed, from urban and rural land use change driven by global commerce patterns to shifts in internal microbial populations within bodies.. Full details		 Add event
WhenTimeDescriptionAdd to your calendar
17 - 19 April 20249:15

Understanding Life in a Changing Planet: 20+2 Years of Egenis, the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences

Marking the 20th anniversary of Egenis, this three-day event will feature an exciting line-up of distinguished international guest speakers, alumni, and current members of Egenis. Speakers will explore some of the key ideas developed at Egenis and their wider impact, as well as looking ahead to the main opportunities and challenges for the interdisciplinary studies of the life sciences in our changing planet. The event will also honour the achievements of Professor John Dupré, co-founder of Egenis and one of the world’s leading philosophers of biology. Full details		 Add event
22 - 23 May 20249:00

IDSAI - Artificial Intelligence for Geological Modelling and Mapping

Rapid developments in AI and data science are unlocking new opportunities for how we go about modelling and mapping the Earth. This timely conference will bring together international experts in geoscientific applications of statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to share perspectives and discuss how we can maximise the benefit of these technologies in the future of geological modelling and mapping. Full details		 Add event
24 - 25 June 2024

Machine Learning for Earth Observation 2024

This workshop will explore how machine learning can help get the most out of remote sensing observations for many application domains.. Full details		 Add event
WhenTimeDescriptionAdd to your calendar
17 - 19 April 20249:15

Understanding Life in a Changing Planet: 20+2 Years of Egenis, the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences

Marking the 20th anniversary of Egenis, this three-day event will feature an exciting line-up of distinguished international guest speakers, alumni, and current members of Egenis. Speakers will explore some of the key ideas developed at Egenis and their wider impact, as well as looking ahead to the main opportunities and challenges for the interdisciplinary studies of the life sciences in our changing planet. The event will also honour the achievements of Professor John Dupré, co-founder of Egenis and one of the world’s leading philosophers of biology. Full details		 Add event
24 April 202412:30

IDSAI/Business School Research Seminar: 'Collaboration and Conflict in Human-Human and Human-Machine Teams' with Professor Taha Yasseri

IDSAI/Business School Seminar. Full details		 Add event
25 April 202414:00

Joint IDSAI/GSI Early Career Lightning Talks

We are excited to welcome you to the first ECR collaborative lightning talks event with IDSAI and GSI. Please sign up to either come along or talk on your research, recent publication, new areas for collaboration or anything else related to being an ECR. Each talk will be allocated 3-5 minutes!! There will be pizza!!:. Full details		 Add event
29 April 202413:30

SCI Project Showcase Series: Does Increasing Public Spending in Health Improve Health?

This project seeks to estimate the causal impacts of public health spending on individual health outcomes in Brazil. It studies a major health reform in Brazil in which municipalities were mandated to spend 15% of their revenue on health. Collecting microdata covering 5,507 Brazilian municipalities over 12 years, this project finds that the large increases in spending resulted in increased availability of hospitals and health professionals, greater individual access to primary care, and improvements in certain health outcomes such as infant mortality, with less evidence suggesting improvements in adult mortality.. Full details		 Add event
29 April 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "Tactical reporting, actionability and uncertainty in the genomic clinic ", Prof Adam Hedgecoe (Cardiff University)

Drawing on ethnographic observations in over 290 clinical team meetings and covering a range of conditions from inherited heart disease, cancer, developmental delays and dysmorphia, this paper seeks to explore professional decision making around clinical genomic sequencing. With a specific focus on decisions about a particular kind of ambiguous result – called Variants of Uncertain Significance (VUS) – this paper examines the role of the perceived ‘actionability’ of specific genomic results. The key insight centres on the way in which clinicians’ beliefs about how parents will react to a result feed back into decisions about the status of such ambiguous results, builds on previous STS work around actionability from Nicole Nelson, Alberto Cambrosio and Stefan Timmermans. Full details		 Add event
2 May 202416:00

SCI Project Showcase Series: Gene Drive Mosquitoes

Gene drive mosquitoes is a short documentary film that is beautifully shot in Uganda and explores Ugandan stakeholders’ hopes for gene drive mosquitoes – a radical new tool that offers a way to eliminate the mosquitoes that cause malaria. Uganda could be one of the first countries in the world to release this type of technology and malaria is the main cause of death in Uganda, so the stakes are high. The film builds on social science research at the University of Exeter and Makerere University in Uganda and shows the complexity of governing this technology. Following the film, Chris Opesen (Makerere University, Uganda) and Sarah Hartley (Exeter) will answer questions and facilitate discussion. Chris will also be available to talk about other global health topics he is working on. Funding to bring Chris to Exeter is from the Exeter’s Sub-Saharan Africa Partnership Development Fund. Film producers: Sarah Hartley and Tom Law (@tomlawsays). Full details		 Add event
13 May 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "Themes from Inference and Representation" Prof Mauricio Suarez (Complutense University of Madrid)

I review some of the main themes in the book I just published for University of Chicago Press, entitled Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science. I focus in particular on the emergence of the modeling attitude in 19th century science and the claimed use of models in practice, with special emphasis on theoretical models in physics and evolutionary biology. I extract some of the consequences of taking an inferential deflationary approach to modeling and discuss some implications for the realism-antirealism debate. Full details		 Add event
20 May 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "When Infant Mortality Was Born: Dutch Preventive Child Health Care without the State, 1890-1930", Martijn van der Meer & Noortje Jacobs (Erasmus MC)

This talk investigates the emergence of Dutch preventive child health care in the first decades of the twentieth century. It shows that the rise of collective action on this terrain followed from the recognition of “infant mortality” as a public problem—a late nineteenth-century configuration that went hand in hand with the professionalization of paediatrics.. Full details		 Add event
22 - 23 May 20249:00

IDSAI - Artificial Intelligence for Geological Modelling and Mapping

Rapid developments in AI and data science are unlocking new opportunities for how we go about modelling and mapping the Earth. This timely conference will bring together international experts in geoscientific applications of statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to share perspectives and discuss how we can maximise the benefit of these technologies in the future of geological modelling and mapping. Full details		 Add event
3 June 202415:30

EGENIS seminar Dr Milena Ivanova (University of Cambridge)

Title, Abstract and registration details to follow. Full details		 Add event
10 June 202415:30

EGENIS seminar: "Rethinking Epidemic Narratives: Combining Historical and Ecological Methods in the Anthropocene", Dr Emily Webster (Durham University)

From spillover diseases to re-emerging infections to rising rates of antimicrobial resistance, microbes have proliferated daily conversation in recent years. These serious and continuing threats to human and nonhuman health fly in the face of triumphalist narratives of epidemiological transition and global disease eradication (Bellamy Foster et al., 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the extent to which these human-microbial interactions are mediated by ecological change widely construed, from urban and rural land use change driven by global commerce patterns to shifts in internal microbial populations within bodies.. Full details		 Add event
24 - 25 June 2024

Machine Learning for Earth Observation 2024

This workshop will explore how machine learning can help get the most out of remote sensing observations for many application domains.. Full details		 Add event