Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest
Renowned geneticist Svante Pääbo has been selected by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego as the recipient of the 2018 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest. The public is invited to attend the award ceremony and a presentation from Pääbo in a free event. His talk is titled “A Neanderthal Perspective on Human Origins.”
Pääbo is an evolutionary anthropologist and pioneer of paleogenetics, the study of preserved genetic material from the remains of ancient organisms, including ancient human DNA. His techniques have allowed the reconstruction of the Neanderthal genome and the discovery of Denisovans, a previously unknown group in Asia related to Neanderthals. Notably, he also discovered that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, and that Neanderthals contributed DNA to present-day humans who live outside Africa.