Lectures · course
Why We Are Human
An interactive lecture series in eight episodes: a mystery, clues, a live experiment with the audience and the reveal. You can also watch the episodes online, with notes and quizzes.
Molecular biologist · Medical bioinformatician · Yekaterinburg
Evgenii Kachkin
Molecular biologist and medical bioinformatician, creator of “Why We Are Human”, an interactive lecture series about the brain, genes and human evolution.
“I grew models of human and chimpanzee brains in a Petri dish”
Test yourself
True or myth?
Four statements about the brain and evolution. Some are true, others are stubborn myths. Pick an answer and read what is really going on.
Correct: 0 of 4
- Myth
Statement 1
People are either “left-brained” logical thinkers or “right-brained” creatives.
Some functions do lean on one hemisphere — in most people, language relies mainly on the left. But when brain scans of more than a thousand people were compared in 2013, no “left-brained” or “right-brained” people turned up: the hemispheres work together.
- Myth
Statement 2
A goldfish has a three-second memory.
In experiments, goldfish learn where and when they are fed and learn to press a lever for food. They remember what they have learned for weeks, not seconds.
- Myth
Statement 3
Humans evolved from chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, not our ancestors. We share a common ancestor that lived 6–7 million years ago, and since then each lineage has evolved in its own way.
- True
Statement 4
Birds are living dinosaurs.
Birds descend from small feathered predatory dinosaurs, relatives of Velociraptor. In modern classification they are dinosaurs — the only branch that survived the extinction 66 million years ago.
Result
At the lectures there are more questions like these, and the whole audience answers by voting from their phones. Then we work out why the right answer is what it is.
Who is talking
Why listen to me
On brain organoids, gene editing and sequencing, I talk about what I have done myself in labs in Germany and Yekaterinburg. Where a topic goes beyond my own experience, I rely on published research — every episode page lists the papers.
More about me-
ZMBH · Heidelberg
Brain organoids
In Henrik Kaessmann’s group I grew human and chimpanzee cortical organoids to study how the brain evolved.
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DKFZ · NGS
Editing and reading genes
Hands-on training in CRISPR/Cas9 for cancer research at the DKFZ and in next-generation sequencing (NGS).
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Education
Molecular biology and medical bioinformatics
Yekaterinburg · Heidelberg, molecular biology · Tübingen, medical bioinformatics
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Yekaterinburg
Genetics in practice
Worked in a DNA-testing lab and advised on setting up an NGS lab. The goal: my own sequencing lab in Yekaterinburg.
Projects
What I do
Science & lectures
Game · experiment
Bluffly
Poker against a fly: decisions are made by a simulation of the fly brain’s connectome, with no poker algorithms and no AI. Play in the browser or in Telegram.
Projects
Tools for labs
Genetics · NGS
In developmentAI NGS interpreter
From raw reads to a draft report: variants, ACMG/AMP classification and literature references. The final word belongs to the geneticist.
qPCR · web app
LiveqPioneer
qPCR analysis in the browser: plate layout, quality control, ΔCt, statistics, charts and reports.
Organoids · ImageJ
LiveOrganoidsPlugin
Automated analysis of early cerebral organoids from brightfield images.
Upcoming
Upcoming talks
Upcoming
Dates coming soon
Venues and dates of the first lectures will appear here, and subscribers will hear first. Would you like a lecture in your city, company or school? Send a request.
Lectures are currently held in Russian.
Newsletter
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New episodes, lecture dates and when sales open. I write rarely and only when there is news.