News: genetics

La Follette School Professor Jason Fletcher will present Molecular Me: Exploring the Social Implications of the Genomics Revolution on June 5 at the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA).

Thanks to technological advances, researchers know more about the human microbiome, a person’s genetic makeup, and the human brain than anyone could have imagined decades earlier. This knowledge brings with it great potential but also challenges for policy.

La Follette School Professor Jason Fletcher will give the next Crossroads of Ideas presentation at UW–Madison’s Discovery Building, 330 N. Orchard Street.

The Russell Sage Foundation awarded funding to La Follette School Professor Pam Herd and two colleagues from Stanford University for their research that analyzes newly available genomic data from a sample of older adults in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. The researchers will examine the role of polygenic scores in influencing educational, occupational, and economic outcomes.

La Follette School Professor Jason Fletcher will discuss his pioneering research that explores the integration of sociology and genetics – sometimes called socio-genomics – in Green Bay on October 24 and in Madison on November 5.

La Follette School Professor Jason Fletcher discussed the social genomics revolution with co-author Dalton Conley during a Freakonomics’ podcast June 14. The episode – Evolution, Accelerated – focused on the advances in genetics and their societal implications.

A new book by La Follette School Professor Jason Fletcher and co-author Dalton Conley explores the latest discoveries being made at the scientific frontier where genomics and the social sciences intersect. The Genome Factor: What the Social Genomics Revolution Reveals about Ourselves, Our History & the Future is published by Princeton University Press.