What's Important About the First 1000 Days of Life?

You likely don’t remember the most important time of your life. Though you are too young to form many memories during the first 1000 days of your existence, this period will have an oversized impact on your development into adolescence and adulthood. Systemic and racial inequality affects access to basic needs, healthcare, and environmental experiences which manifest into differences in behavior, cognition, and health that are evident before a child’s third birthday. On December 8, the Center will be joined by moderator Maureen Allwood (Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Adjunct Associate Professor in Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health) and speaker Brenda Blasingame (Program Manager of Pritzker Children’s Initiative) for The First 1000 Days of Life: Setting the Stage for Equity. Ahead of the seminar, we spoke with Allwood and Blasingame about their work and research experience in early childhood development and the effects of institutionalized racism on education and public health.

Read the full article on our website and join us on December 8 at 4:30 PM ET. Free and open to the public; registration required.

Featured Events:

Our online calendar of events includes virtual events.

Public Health, Leadership, and Public Trust in India: Discussing Pandemics and their Aftermath

As the COVID-19 pandemic deepens across South Asia, it has exposed challenges relating to public trust in pandemic preparedness, containment, and questioned the power and limits of expert knowledge. How can we rebuild and overcome these fractures? Free and open to the public; registration required. 

Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi

Dwaipayan Banerjee explores the efforts of Delhi's urban poor to create a livable life with cancer as patients and families negotiate an overextended health system unequipped to respond to the disease. How does the disease distribute itself across networks of social relations? Free and open to the public; registration required. 

What Can Artificial Intelligence Teach Us About the Brain?

In the Company of Men

Join author Véronique Tadjo to discuss her novel In the Company of Men, which draws on accounts of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to explore how we cope with a global crisis and how we can combat fear and prejudice. Free and open to the public; registration required. 

Vernacular Industrialism in China

Eugenia Lean explores how unlikely individuals devised unconventional, homegrown approaches to industry and science in early twentieth-century China. Learn more about the central role of culture and knowledge production in technological and industrial change. Free and open to the public; registration required. 

Featured Deadline: 

For a complete listing of upcoming deadlines, please visit our website.

2021 Center for Science and Society Seed Grants

Due December 15, 2020. Grants are available to support interdisciplinary research projects and programming. Open to Columbia and Barnard students, postdocs, and junior faculty. Proposals that connect to our year-long theme of Knowledge and Access and/or focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion in policies, systems, and spaces in science and society will be prioritized.

Seed Grants in Society and Neuroscience

Due December 21, 2020. The Presidential Scholars program invites Letters of Inquiry for interdisciplinary projects that lie at the intersection of neuroscience and the arts, humanities, or social sciences with special priority given to projects with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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The Science and Society Newsletter is sent biweekly and features updates from the Center and featured upcoming events and deadlines. While we can not guarantee that your event will be featured, we are always happy to include relevant upcoming events, grant deadlines, calls for papers, open positions, etc on our website. Please email us at scienceandsociety@columbia.edu with any submissions. 

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