Evolutionary medicine sheds light on the interaction between environmental influences and human genetics as well as between the evolution of diseases and human susceptibility. It integrates evolutionary biology and medicine and includes topics that play a major role in both disciplines, such as, for example, epidemiology, infectious diseases, and the evolution of disease genes. It aims to understand how diseases work and to explore their evolutionary causes, as such insights can make a significant contribution to biomedical research. In order to build new bridges between evolutionary biology and medicine, the Integrative Research Institute of Life Sciences (IRI) at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, on November 10, 2016, holds a symposium entitled “The Evolution of Medicine to Evolutionary Medicine” as part of its “Interdisciplinary Dialogue” series.

The symposium is part of the series “Interdisciplinary Dialogue”. Supported by the Schering Stiftung, it addresses problems in medicine in view of new ideas and discoveries in evolutionary biology. In addition to Randolph Nesse (Arizona State University), one of the pioneers of the concept of evolutionary medicine, the symposium features lectures by John Baines (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel), Martin Brüne (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Peter Hammerstein (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Joachim Kurtz (Westfälische Wilhems-Universität Münster), Tobias Lenz (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology), and Rainer Straub (Regensburg University Hospital).