The program for the 2017 ISEMPH meeting in Groningen is below.
An html version with abstracts linked is available here.
A pdf version ISEMPH2017Program.
Abstracts are published here ISEMPH 2017 abstracts

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Join us in Groningen for the 2017 ISEMPH Meeting!

The Third Annual Meeting of the International Society of Evolution, Medicine & Public Health will take place August 18-21, 2017 in Groningen, Netherlands in conjunction with the XVIth European Society for Evolutionary Biology Meeting. ISEMPH brings together scientists, teachers, clinicians, and students in the evolution and medicine community to share ideas and create new connections that will advance the field. This open meeting is designed to bridge the many different disciplines where relevant research takes place, including infectious disease, public health, genetics, anthropology, psychology, oncology, ecology, and veterinary medicine.

Keynote speakers include Svante Pääbo, Linda Partridge, Stephen Stearns, Marian Joels, Mervyn Singer, Sylvia Cremer, Francisco Ubeda, and Peer Bork. Details at the ISEMPH Website.

Submit your abstract now…and certainly before the February 15 deadline.

The first two days of the ISEMPH Annual Meeting will be at the University of Groningen Medical Center, the Monday sessions will be at the Groningen Conference Center in conjunction with the European Society for Evolutionary Biology Annual Meeting August 21-25 (separate registration and abstract submission is required). Registration for both meetings will open in February. We anticipate discounted registration fees for those who attend both meetings. If you have an idea for a special symposium, round table or other creative experience, please send a note to nicole.bender@iem.uzh.ch. She and Program Committee Chair Frank Rühli are working with 12 other committee members to create a program unmatched in the history of our field.

The CARTA Symposium on Implications of Anthropogeny for Medicine and Health, co-sponsored by ASU’s Center for Evolution and Medicine, was held on October 14. See here for Karla Moeller’s excellent account of proceedings. Now Ajit Varki has sent a number of links to different portals for the video recordings of all the talks which were made thanks to UCSD-TV. These video recordings will be archived on these websites in the coming weeks: UCSD-TV, YouTube, and iTunes. To see the complete list of individual presentations on the CARTA site, go to the event page and click on the talk of interest.

It was only a small meeting – by the standards of scientific symposia – barely 50 participants in one of the smaller lecture rooms donated for the purpose by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London. But, as Randy Nesse pointed out, it was a miracle that it was there at all and, to his knowledge, there was nothing else like it in the international world of psychiatry. It was the inaugural symposium of the Evolution and Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the RCP, EPSiG for short, and it was held on October 4th. EPSiG’s leading lights, Riadh Abed and Paul St. John-Smith were supplemented by three heavy-hitting guest speakers: Robin Dunbar, Simon Baron-Cohen, and Randolph Nesse as the case for putting evolution at the foundation of all psychiatry was forcefully made. A recurring theme was the complexity of the social environment and how this interfaces with psychiatry and psychiatric conditions. All presentations were videotaped and hyperlinks that follow will lead to them on Youtube. And for those of you who would like to know more about what EPSiG thinks evolution has to offer to psychiatry, here is an excellent paper, co-authored by Abed and St. John-Smith.

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Cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz entered an operating room where her patient was already on the table. She’d had many patients in the past through the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center, which trained her well for that moment. The foot sticking out from under the surgical towels, however, didn’t belong to a human. It belonged to a lion. How did being a human cardiologist prepare Barbara to work on lions? Humans and lions can’t be that similar, especially through the eyes of a doctor… right? Last Friday, Barbara kicked off the symposium “Implications of Anthropogeny for Medicine and Health” by highlighting the similarities of her patients across species. It was the first of many research talks that questioned the differences between humans and other animals and between populations of humans, as well as the similarities we have from shared origins. The University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and the Salk Institute’s Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) joined forces with the Arizona State University (ASU) Center for Evolution and Medicine to sponsor the symposium, which was free and open to the public. During talks that were peppered with descriptions of edible liquid gold, killer sugars, battles within wombs, and studies within tombs, visitors learned about the traits and diseases that make us human (and animal) products of our world.

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On the morning of Thursday November 10 at Humboldt University 7 leading evolutionary and clinical scientists will present short talks that will be of interest to the general public, as well as scientists and health professionals. It is free and open to the public and all are welcome, but registration is required. See details below and information about the afternoon session for those with a special interest or expertise. Registration and full conference information is here.

The goal of the symposium is to showcase new ideas and discoveries that use evolutionary biology to solve problems in medicine and public health, and to encourage new connections between those with an interest in evolutionary medicine. (more…)