Einstein meets Literaturfestival: Bassem Hassan - The poet inside

Keynote and discussion with Bassem Hassan, Einstein BIH Visiting Fellow and head of the "Brain Development" team at the ICM Brain & Spine Institute in Paris

Bassem Hassan is a world-renowned neuroscientist whose work has the potential to shed invaluable light on mechanisms of brain development and evolution. He uses the fruit fly Drosophila as a model system to deconstruct the genetic code of neurons.

The driving motivation of his research is ... poetry! At the beginning of his career, he asked himself whether he should rather become a poet than a scientist. Luckily he decided for science and for poetry. He always wanted to decipher the language in which nature writes her poems. "There is poetry in biology in both its form and content, and the pursuit of that beauty is both rigorously rational and emotionally uplifting", says Hassan.

Join Bassem Hassan on his stunning tour through the neurodevelopmental basis of individuality and discover the connection between poetry and biology.