Limmud Bay Area Festival 2018

What is the structure of our universe?  How did it get to look the way it does, starting from the big bang? And most importantly, how do we know all that?

We've been talking about Personalized Medicine for decades.  Ever since the Human Genome project was declared complete in 2003, precision medicine has been on the horizon, and much like the horizon it's been (in the broad sense) just out of our collective reach.  Alex Furman, co-founder and head of organizational development at Invitae will take you through the recent history, which is full of incredible technological and scientific advances on one hand, and frustrating setbacks and roadblocks on the other.  We'll talk about the coming paradigm shift in modern healthcare and the massive countervailing forces that are in the way.

Corporate America has changed tremendously over the past few decades, as we shift further and further towards the information economy.  Our approaches to managing companies, on the other hand, have been largely stagnant - many of the practices still in use today go back to the Mad Men era and beyond.  This is creating a massive disconnect between how things are done and the demands of the modern-day workforce.  Alex Furman, co-founder and head of organizational development at Invitae will talk about bringing modern analytical approaches to bear on making the right decisions, identifying top talent, removing systemic bias from compensation, and aligning individual incentives with those of the company at large.

Let's break down the complexity of genetic testing and screening.  We will have a short, easy to digest, conversation about why conditions occur.  We'll also discuss how genetic results could affect your family and resources for genetic testing and genetic counseling.  We can talk about both recessive conditions that may be of interest to couples planning a pregnancy and the BRCA1/2 genes, along with their impact on the Jewish community.  

Is Earth home to the only living organisms in the Universe or should we expect life elsewhere?  To address this question, we must first understand what life is, then what ingredients are necessary for life, and finally where in the universe we can find those ingredients.