2013

George Slavich Publishes Paper on Human Social Genomics

16.04.2013 10:32

Society in Science - Branco Weiss fellow Dr. George Slavich has published a new article on the exciting new field of research that he and his co-author, Dr. Steven Cole, are calling "human social genomics." Central to the article is the idea that although we generally experience our bodies as being biologically stable across time, evidence has emerged demonstrating that changes in the expression of hundreds of genes can occur as a result of the social environments we inhabit.

Society in Science Symposium 2013

19.03.2013 10:34

On November 25 and 26, the Society in Science Symposium 2013 will take place at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.

More than 500 applications for the 2013 fellowship

04.02.2013 14:36

The campaign to recruit new Branco Weiss fellows in 2013 has been concluded on February 1 with 567 applications.

"Cortison. Geschichte eines Hormons, 1900-1955" by Dr. Lea Haller

15.01.2013 16:04

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 15, 2013 reviewed Branco Weiss fellow Lea Haller's book “Cortisone. Geschichte eines Hormons, 1900-1955”.

2012

Major donation from Branco Weiss

25.10.2012 09:53

Dr. Branco Weiss has bequeathed an estimated 100 million Swiss francs to Society in Science. Follow the link to download the press kit.

Insufficient Sleep May Lead to Metabolic Disorders

17.10.2012 10:22

Sleep deprivation has a direct and harmful effect on fat cells, as a new study by Society in Science fellow Josiane Broussard and her team shows. This effect can lead to major health issues such as obesity or type 2 diabetes.

Society in Science Symposium 2012

04.10.2012 16:12

On November 19 and 20, the Society in Science Symposium 2012 will take place at Hotel Montana in Lucerne, Switzerland.

George Slavich wins two prestigious awards

24.09.2012 13:54

Branco Weiss fellow Dr. George Slavich recently received two prestigious awards from the American Psychological Association.

Branco Weiss fellow Aoife O'Donovan wins prestigious Award

12.07.2012 20:00

Branco Weiss fellow Aoife O'Donovan has been awarded the prestigious Neal E. Miller New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

Eight new Branco Weiss fellows were selected in 2012

06.06.2012 16:05

Society in Science has selected eight new fellows in research fields ranging from philosophy to applied systems biology.

Living with extreme weather events and disasters

24.05.2012 22:21

Society in Science fellow Reinette Biggs contributed to a special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Slavich Wins Early Career Research Award

25.04.2012 17:03

Society in Science fellow George Slavich has been awarded the 2012 Early Career Research Award from the Western Psychological Association.

Traumatic Stress May Worsen Heart Disease

13.04.2012 09:57

The more trauma heart patients were exposed to, the higher their levels of inflammation, as a new study by Society in Science fellow Aoife O'Donovan and her team shows.

Anticipation of Stressful Situations Accelerates Cellular Aging

08.03.2012 13:07

Branco Weiss fellow Aoife O'Donovan is lead author of a study that shows that the anticipation of future stressful situations may increase the risk for chronic diseases.

The Role of Genetic Factors in the Formation of Identical Twins

14.02.2012 14:55

The Economist has published an article about the research of past Branco Weiss fellow Bruno Reversade, who may have found a gene involved in monozygotic twinning in humans.

Occupy Science?

26.01.2012 09:45

Society in Science fellow Krishanu Saha has recently had an opinion piece published in magazine 'The Scientist'. His article discusses the mounting dissatisfaction with governance approaches that erect barriers between donors and the biomedical research in which they are participating, and ways to address it.

"Attention and olfactory consciousness" by Andreas Keller

20.12.2011 16:54

Society in Science fellow Andreas Keller has recently published an article about olfactory consciousness. This article is a part of a larger project in which he plans to elucidate the ways in which consciousness research is biased by the focus on visual consciousness. Many theories about visual consciousness cannot be generalized to other modalities like olfaction and the following article discusses some examples.

'Time-Critical Social Mobilization' with Riley Crane

08.12.2011 16:08

An article featuring work undertaken by Branco Weiss fellow Riley Crane has been recently published in Science. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held the DARPA Network Challenge, in which competing teams were asked to locate 10 red weather balloons placed at locations around the continental United States. Riley and his team were able to locate all of them in just under 9 hours, winning the competition.

Slavich Wins Prestigious New Investigator Award

06.12.2011 12:24

Branco Weiss fellow George Slavich has been awarded the prestigious Neal E. Miller New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

'Novel surface triples stem-cell growth in culture'

09.11.2011 17:12

Branco Weiss fellow Krishanu Saha has just had another article published, though this time on research completed in association with Whitehead Institute and MIT scientists. The article details how they have created a surface capable of tripling the number of human embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that can be grown in culture by current methods.

'Treat Donors as Partners in Biobank Research'

20.10.2011 10:16

Branco Weiss fellow Krishanu Saha and J. Benjamin Hurlbut argue in this week's Nature for a better system to protect research subjects.

Assessing Vaccination Sentiments with Online Social Media

14.10.2011 14:41

Branco Weiss fellow Marcel Salathé has designed and implemented a unique and innovative analysis of how social media can affect the spread of a disease.

Skin Conductance Response to the Pain of Others Predicts Later Costly Helping

14.10.2011 09:47

Branco Weiss fellow Grit Hein shows that the match between first- and second-person autonomic experiences predicts a person's willingness to behave altruistically later on.

Society in Science Symposium - Program Announced

29.09.2011 11:37

The program for the annual Society in Science Symposium has been announced. All Branco Weiss fellows get together over two days to present their work. Open to the public, the presentations are categorized into: Our Brain, Our Body, Our Environment and Our Society and Information Systems.

Concatenated global crises

12.08.2011 22:50

Society in Science fellow Reinette Biggs contributed to a discussion paper that asks whether global crises are increasingly interconnected, and what mechanisms may potentially contribute to this state of affairs.

Read more … Concatenated global crises

Society in Science selects four new fellows

26.07.2011 13:53

Daniela Andres, Josiane Broussard, Adrian Künzler and Saskia van Manen have received the prestigious award that can provide them with up to five years of complete academic freedom.

Society in Science Symposium 2011 Dates Announced

01.06.2011 14:06

The annual meeting for Society in Science will be held in Zurich on November 21 and 22, 2011.

Men's and Women's Immune Systems Respond Differently to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

03.05.2011 13:14

Men and women had starkly different immune system responses to chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, with men showing no response and women showing a strong response, in two studies by researchers (including Society in Science Fellow Aoife O'Donovan) at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

Aoife O'Donovan Reports on Accelerated Aging Seen in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Patients

26.04.2011 12:09

Adults with post-traumatic stress disorder and a history of childhood trauma had significantly shorter telomere length than those with PTSD but without childhood trauma, in a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

George Slavich Receives Early Career Award

19.04.2011 22:43

Branco Weiss Fellow George Slavich has been named recipient of the 2011 Enrico E. Jones Early Career Award for Research in Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology.

Award Someone Who Makes a Difference

06.01.2011 13:56

Society in Science is exploring new avenues to spread the word about its generous personal grants.

2010

How Diseases Spread through Communities

21.12.2010 13:58

Marcel Salathé developed a new technique to count the number of possible disease-spreading events that occur in...

Genes & Environment 2010 Talks Videos

01.12.2010 14:00

Webcasts of the presentations and panel discussions during the conference on "Genes & Environment: Finding the Missing Heritability of Complex Traits" are now available online.

The Irish Times Portrays Aoife O'Donovan

19.11.2010 14:00

Aoife O'Donovan was selected as a Branco Weiss Fellow in 2010. The Irish Times talks about her research and the benefits of the fellowship.

Annual Meeting 2010: Invitation, Program and Abstracts

08.11.2010 14:00

Find here the program of the Annual Meeting 2010 of Society in Science - The Branco Weiss Fellowship and the abstracts of the lectures that will be held.

Branco Weiss (1929 - 2010)

01.11.2010 16:59

Society in Science shares the sad news that its donor Branco Weiss died on October 31 2010.

Read more … Branco Weiss (1929 - 2010)

Species Loss could be Slowed, Says Paper Co-Authored by Oonsie Biggs

26.10.2010 15:50

Branco Weiss fellow Oonsie Biggs contributed to a paper on the outlooks for biodiversity published by the journal Science.

Riley Crane Speaks on BBC Radio about World Hunger

12.10.2010 12:00

BBC Radio talks to Riley Crane about a social spreading experiment he has been working on with the United Nations.

Grit Hein Finds Out How Neural Responses Indicate Our Willingness to Help

08.10.2010 11:58

Neuron published a study with Branco Weiss Fellow Grit Hein as first author showing that witnessing a person from our own group or an outsider suffering pain causes neural responses in two very different regions of the brain.

Society in Science Seeks a 80-100% Employee for Global Communications

01.10.2010 19:02

Thanks to a considerable increase in the endowment made possible by an additional gift of Branco Weiss, Society in Science will be able to accept as many as ten new fellows starting in 2011. We thus have to increase the number of qualified applicants considerably. The fellowship has mandated science communications GmbH with the task to increase its visibility significantly. Science communications is now seeking an employee for global communications who will exclusively work on the mandate for Society in Science.

Oonsie Biggs Featured in Science Careers

10.09.2010 17:39

Science Careers published an extensive article on the newly selected Branco Weiss Fellow Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs.

Society in Science Selects Three New Fellows

25.08.2010 18:13

The Branco Weiss Fellowship announces Reinette Biggs, Arko Ghosh and Aoife O'Donovan as new fellows.

"Lightening the Arduousness of Human Existence"

25.08.2010 14:02

Using a quote from Bertolt Brecht's "Life of Galileo", Dr. Branco Weiss, the founder and mentor of Society in Science, published a substantial article in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) about the merits of philanthropy since its first mentioning during the 5th century BC.

George Slavich Finds Out How Stress Influences the Immune System

12.08.2010 17:51

The online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) just published an article by George Slavich in which he and his co-workers describe how our brains respond to social stressors, thus influencing our body's immune system in ways that may negatively affect health.

Marcel Salathé on Mice and Prairie Dogs

09.08.2010 18:30

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) just published an article co-authored by Marcel Salathé about the spread of plague among prairie dogs.

Riley Crane Hits the Headlines

27.07.2010 16:50

Having won the DARPA award in December 2009, Riley Crane's work in "social physics" enjoys much attention by international media.

Genes & Environment 2010 at Stanford University

10.06.2010 12:30

A conference entitled "Genes & Environment: Finding the Missing Heritability of Complex Traits" will be held at Stanford University on October 14 & 15, 2010. The event is co-organized by Branco Weiss Fellows George Slavich and Marcel Salathé.

Donation Event on June 1, 2010

20.05.2010 18:27

The faculty of ETH and the University of Zurich (Phil. II) are invited to commemorate the endowment of Society in Science on June 1, 2010 in the Auditorium of the Branco Weiss Information Science Lab.

Branco Weiss Donates Society in Science to ETH

20.05.2010 18:25

On January 1 2011 Branco Weiss will donate Society in Science to ETH – together with a 20 million Swiss francs endowment to warrant the fellowship's operations for the next ten years.