NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series: Jenny Tung, Ph.D.

A Proper Study for Mankind: Understanding the Human Condition through the Lens of other Primates
Dr. Tung is the Director of the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, and a Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University. She joined Duke University in 2012 after completing her post-doctoral training in the University of Chicago Department of Human Genetics and her Ph.D. training in the Duke Biology department. She founded the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at MPI-EVA in 2022. Research in the department focuses on the intersection between behavior, social structure, and genes. Dr. Tung’s lab is particularly interested in how the social environment influences gene regulation, population genetic structure, and health and survival across the life course.
The NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series, colloquially known as WALS, is the highest-profile lecture program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Speakers include some of the biggest names in biomedical and behavioral research. The goal of the WALS is to keep NIH researchers abreast of the latest and most important research in the United States and beyond.