2023 Session 4 – NYU Workshop on Race and Racism in the Sciences

Thursday, June 1, 2023 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm
Hybrid seminar (in-person attendance is strongly encouraged)

Physical location: Meyer Hall, Room 121
Zoom link to session (Registration required)

Photo of Ann Morning Photo of Aravinda Chakravarti

Ann J. Morning
– Professor, Sociology Department, NYU
and
Aravinda Chakravarti
– Director, Center for Human Genetics and Genomics, NYU School of Medicine

“Race, ethnicity and other population descriptors in genetics research”

Abstract:

We describe and discuss the details of a commissioned study to clarify the scientific rationales for describing research participants and their group labels. We start with an historical view of how we got to our current state, then proceed to examine how else we could achieve our scientific aims, and follow with our recommendations and suggested implementations, to improve genetic and genomic science. Our overarching goal is to motivate researchers to consider when population descriptors are necessary, which ones are appropriate for a specific type of genetics study design, whether multiple descriptors are necessary, and what additional information is needed for genetic dissection of phenotypes.

Speakers:

Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D. is Director, Center for Human Genetics and Genomics, and the Muriel G & George W Singer Professor of Neuroscience & Physiology and Professor of Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. He was the 2008 President of the American Society of Human Genetics and has been elected to the US National Academy of Science, the US National Academy of Medicine, the Indian National Academy of Science and the Indian Academy of Sciences. His research has led to roles as a key participant and architect of the Human Genome project, the HapMap and 1000 Genomes projects, and his work is currently aimed at genome-scale analysis of the molecular basis of human disease. For his contributions to human genetics and genomics he was awarded the 2013 William Allan Award by the American Society of Human Genetics and the 2018 Chen Award by the Human Genome Organization.

Aravinda received his doctoral degree in human genetics in 1979 and started his faculty career at the University of Pittsburgh (1980 – 1993), was the James H. Jewell Professor of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University (1994-2000), and the inaugural Director and Henry J. Knott Professor of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins (2000-2007), and the inaugural Director of the Center for Complex Disease Genomics at Johns Hopkins (2007-2018) prior to his arrival at NYU. He is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of Genome Research and Annual Reviews of Genomics & Human Genetics and serves on the boards of numerous private Institutes and charities, international journals, academic societies, the NIH and biotechnology companies.

Ann Morning is the James Weldon Johnson Professor of Sociology and incoming Divisional Dean for Social Sciences and Vice Dean for Strategic and Global Initiatives in New York University’s Faculty of Arts and Science. A member of NYU Abu Dhabi’s Affiliated Faculty, she served as Academic Director of 19 Washington Square North, NYUAD’s home in New York, from 2019 to 2022. Trained in demography, her research focuses on race, ethnicity, and the sociology of science, especially as they pertain to census classification worldwide and to individuals’ concepts of difference. She is the author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press 2011) and An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in Italy and the United States (with Marcello Maneri, Russell Sage 2022).

Morning was a 2008-09 Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of Milan-Bicocca, a 2014-15 Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, and a 2019 Visiting Professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. She was a member of the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations from 2013 to 2019 and has consulted on ethnoracial statistics for the European Commission, the United Nations, the World Bank Group, and Elsevier. She is currently a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on the Use of Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry as Population Descriptors in Genomics Research. Morning holds her B.A. in Economics and Political Science magna cum laude from Yale University, a Master’s of International Affairs from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University.

Recommended Readings

Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.