The changing landscape of health: any role for evolutionary medicine?

21 June 2023
Event organised by the Department of Medicine and Surgery
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Bicocca25

21 June 2023
14.00-18.00 

Aula Magna, University of Milano-Bicocca
AGORA' Building (U6), Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, Milan
The event is organised by the Department of Medicine and Surgery.

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Agenda

The changing landscape of health: any role for evolutionary medicine?

14:00-14:15 - Institutional greetings and introduction to the meeting

                       Giovanna Iannantuoni. Rector, University of Milano-Bicocca

                       Pietro Invernizzi. Director of the School of Medicine and Surgery,                                       University of Milano-Bicocca

14:15-15:00 - Keynote

                       Evolutionary medicine: The great opportunity

                       Randolph M. Nesse, University of Michigan 

15:00-15:20 - Knowledge of human evolution allows for a better understanding of

                          our biological nature

                         Giorgio Manzi, Sapienza University of Rome

15:20-15:40 – Human genome diversity: frequently asked questions

                       Guido Barbujani, University of Ferrara

15:40-16:00 – Darwin’s impact on the medical sciences (1880-1980)

                       Fabio Zampieri, University of Padua

16:00-16:20 – Which theory of evolution for evolutionary medicine?

                        Telmo Pievani, University of Padua

16:20-17:20 - Round table

                        Chairman: Maurizio Casiraghi, University of Milano-Bicocca

17:20-17:30 - Conclusions

                        Pietro Invernizzi. Director of the School of Medicine and Surgery,                                      University of Milano-Bicocca

Keynote speaker | Randolph M. Nesse

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nesse

Randolph M. Nesse, MD is Research Professor of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, where he became the Founding Director of the Center for Evolution Medicine in 2014.  

He was previously Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan where he led the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program and helped to establish one of the first anxiety disorders clinics.  

His research on the neuroendocrinology of anxiety evolved into studies on why aging exists. Those studies led to collaboration with the evolutionary biologist George Williams on Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, a book that initiated much new work in the field of evolutionary medicine. His research is on how selection shapes mechanisms that regulate defenses such as pain, fever, anxiety and low mood, and how social selection shaped human capacities for morality.  His larger mission is to establish evolutionary biology as a basic science for medicine. 

Dr. Nesse is the Founding President of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences, and an elected Fellow of the AAAS.

His new book, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry shows how asking evolutionary questions about why mental disorders exist can make psychiatry more effective.

Speakers guests

Telmo Pievani

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Telmo Pievani

Telmo Pievani is Full Professor at the Department of Biology, University of Padua, where he covers the first Italian chair of Philosophy of Biological Sciences since 2015. Author of 322 publications, included several books and theatre scientific shows, he collaborates with RAI radio and TV projects, and he is a columnist for Il Corriere della Sera, and the magazines Le Scienze and Micromega.

Guido Barbujani

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Guido Barbujani

Guido Barbujani has worked at the Universities of Padua, State of New York at Stony Brook, London (Queen Mary College) and Bologna, and is now professor of Genetics at Ferrara. His main research interests are population genetics and human evolution.

Maurizio Casiraghi

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Maurizio Casiraghi

 

Full professor of Zoology, Maurizio Casiraghi is an evolutionary biologist and zoologist working at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy, mainly on symbioses and interaction among living beings. Maurizio Casiraghi is deeply involved in the development and management of education and since 2019 he is vice-rector for education at the University of Milan-Bicocca.  Maurizio Casiraghi is also very active in the communication of science.

Giorgio Manzi

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Giorgio Manzi

Giorgio Manzi is Lincean and professor of Anthropology (BIO/08) at the Sapienza University of Rome. As a paleoanthropologist, his research activity is documented by over 200 scientific publications. Also active as a scientific communicator, he is the author of books and collaborates with newspapers, periodicals, radio and TV broadcasts.

Fabio Zampieri

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Fabio Zampieri

 

Fabio Zampieri is Associate Professor of History of Medicine at the University of Padua. His main lines of research are: the contributions of Darwinism and evolutionary biology to medical sciences, the history of pathology and the history of cardiology. He is the author of 6  monographs, about 200 articles, many of them in impacted medical journals.