29.11.2017

Public lecture by Prof Eske Willerslev

Time and place: Thursday, November 30, 2017 at 14:15, University of Tartu museum (Lossi Street 25, Tartu).
Title of the lecture: „aDNA is revolutionizing our view of the past”
Prof Eske Willerslev is Prince Philip Chair of Ecology and Evolution elect at the University of Cambridge, Lundbeck Foundation Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Director of Centre for GeoGenetics (a Center of Excellence), Director of Sino-Danish Sequencing Centre (a collaboration between the Copenhagen sequencing centre and BGI), Director of National Tissue Bank and Sequencing Facility, Professor of National History Museum at the University of Copenhagen. For Prof. Eske Willerslev’s CV, please see here

Prof Eske Willerslev is a UT Honorary Doctor of Natural Sciences (2017).

In the past two decades, ancient DNA research has progressed from the retrieval of small fragments of mitochondrial DNA to full genome studies of ancient populations, the diseases they carried, and the environment surrounding them. Increasingly, ancient genetic information is providing a unique means to directly test theories in archaeology, palaeontology, anthropology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Initial results have changed the way we look at long debated topics such as the last ice age megafaunal extinctions, and early peopling of Europe, Asia, and the Americas.