Rina Bliss is a professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and award-winning author of Rethinking Intelligence (Harper Wave), Race Decoded (Stanford University Press) and Social by Nature (Stanford University Press). She is an expert on the social significance of emerging genetic sciences. Rina is a member of the Human Genome Synthesis Project known as “GP-Write,” as well as the Finding Your Roots Genetics and Genealogy Project. She is an affiliate of UCSF and the UC Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, and is a consultant to public institutions like the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, California Academy of Sciences, Exploratorium, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Rina’s latest book Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential tells us what we should know about the new science of intelligence, and how best to use that knowledge. Recent years have witnessed a drive to sequence people for genetic markers associated with IQ. Meanwhile, the new gene editing tool CRISPR now promises to tweak our mind’s capacity right down to our DNA code. But cutting-edge research into how our genes respond to our environments shows us that hacking our DNA might not boost our brains after all. Rina translates the science to give us alternative solutions that work and a completely new outlook on the meaning of intelligence.

Rina speaks to audiences all over the world about the politics of health, technology, education, and equality in the new millennium, presenting at organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, EU European Molecular Biology Lab, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, National Institutes of Health, National Human Genome Research Institute, and Hastings Center. Her research has featured in international news media like East Asia Daily, German Public Broadcasting, La Presse, National Swedish Radio, NPR, and the New York Times, as well as radio and television programs like Bill Nye Saves the World, Radiolab, ABC News, and TED. Her work has been reported and published in a wide array of magazines and journals, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, Zocalo, Scientific American, LeapsMag, Nature, Science, Technology Review, and WIRED.

Rina holds a PhD in Sociology from the New School for Social Research, has held Postdoctoral Fellowships at Brown University BioMed and the Cogut Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and has received grants and fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Science Foundation, University of California Basic, Clinical, and Translational Sciences Program, and University of California Center for New Racial Studies, among others.


Topics:

  • Ever wondered where intelligence comes from? While an IQ test supposedly tells us how we measure up, business gurus and tech giants are continually bringing us new tests and apps to help us boost ourselves. However, advances in neuroscience are showing us that there is more to intelligence than IQ or DNA. Our bodies are constantly responding to stressors in our environment, powering down healthy genes while powering up unhealthy ones, and encouraging mental degeneration instead of regeneration, as we move through our day. In this talk, Rina breaks down the science to help you understand how you can truly maximize your mind at home and at work. She also shares some important strategies for detoxing the workplace as well as the products and services you bring to the world.

  • Many believe intelligence is an innate attribute, programmed into our DNA code along with our skin color, height and so on. But as research develops, we are learning that intelligence is not innate and is not a fixed quantity. No test can measure the infinite potential that human beings have to learn from their environment. Learning from our environments is the true meaning of intelligence, and with the right social conditions, it is something anyone can achieve. In this talk, Rina covers the toxicity of stressful learning environments, and the need to teach students about the relationship between our brains, genes, and environments so that they can maximize their own learning. She will give classroom strategies that promote better learning outcomes, capitalizing on the latest in neurogenetics and sociology, while giving educators, administrators, and students alike a more nurturing path to academic success.

  • “The Personal is Political” is a rallying cry that has helped raise consciousness about the ways politics impact our personal lives, making us who we are. But new genetic sciences focused on how our genes turn on and off are showing that the slogan is also an apt take on the conditions for intellectual acumen, mental clarity, and brain health. In this talk, Rina shows the relationship between social environments and mental health, illuminating the importance of a healthy environment for a healthy mind. Rina also shares ways we can dismantle toxic “isms” in our institutions and organizations, and how we can detox our world at a community, national, and global level.

  • AI has taken school work and classrooms by storm. Now everyone is wondering: Will AI transform education? Will it help students tap into their intelligence? In this talk, Rina discusses the benefits and drawbacks of AI learning. She shows when, where, and why it can be useful, and when, where, and why we must limit its influence. Comparing human intelligence and artificial intelligence, Rina also gives a breakdown of AI-based learning that can be extrapolated to knowledge and skills in the workplace.

  • Education has become increasingly student-centered in recent years, offering more personalized forms of cultivation and individualized understandings of how best we learn. Still we remain hopelessly stuck in the past due to prevailing broken notions of intelligence and learning. In this talk, Rina shares new developments in cognitive and DNA science that can help us create a new approach to student-centered learning. She explains the importance of flexible, growth-minded pedagogy as well as how to create the optimum brain-supportive learning environments that empower students and educators to make the most of their minds.

Twitter: @DrRinaBliss

Instagram: @dr.rinabliss