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Evgenii Kachkin, molecular biologist and medical bioinformatician

About

Evgenii Kachkin

A molecular biologist and medical bioinformatician from Yekaterinburg. In Germany I studied how the human brain evolved and how to read a genome. Now I talk about it on stage — in a way you can follow without a biology degree.

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Path

From Yekaterinburg to Heidelberg — and back

Education: Yekaterinburg · Heidelberg, molecular biology · Tübingen, medical bioinformatics.

  1. Heidelberg

    Molecular biology

  2. ZMBH · Heidelberg

    Cortical organoids in Henrik Kaessmann’s group

    I grew human and chimpanzee cortical organoids — tiny models of the brain made from stem cells. Comparing them shows how the development of the human brain differs from that of the chimpanzee brain.

  3. DKFZ · Heidelberg

    CRISPR/Cas9 and NGS

    Hands-on training in CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing for cancer research and in next-generation sequencing (NGS).

  4. Tübingen

    Medical bioinformatics

    Analysing genomic data for medicine.

  5. Yekaterinburg

    Genetics in practice

    Worked in a DNA-testing lab. Advised on setting up an NGS lab.

  6. Goal

    My own sequencing lab in Yekaterinburg

Work

Research and tools

Why lectures

Science you can check

In the lab you get used to checking every claim. Outside the lab, the brain and genes are talked about in catchy headlines more often than in facts, and those headlines can almost never be checked.

“Why We Are Human” is my attempt to show how things really are — without putting the audience to sleep. That’s why every episode is built as an investigation: a mystery, clues from real research, an experiment in which the whole room votes, and only then the reveal. The audience doesn’t just hear the conclusion — they see how it is reached.

Every episode comes with a list of research papers, so you can check everything said on stage for yourself.

Course “Why We Are Human” Invite me to speak