Meet the Speakers
26.10.2026
Evolutionary and Biomedical Insights into Sex Differences in the Primate Brain
Dr. Alexandra DeCasien, National Institute of Health, USA
Dr. Alex DeCasien is a Principal Investigator and Head of the Computational and Evolutionary Neurogenomics Unit at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). As a computational biologist and evolutionary neuroscientist, her work investigates how age, sex, and species contribute to variation in brain structure and function.
Her research integrates bioinformatics with phylogenetic comparative methods to uncover the evolutionary forces driving brain diversity and to identify targets for translational research. She is particularly engaged in advancing the study of sex differences in health and disease.
Dr. DeCasien is an active leader in the field, serving as a Council Member for the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences. She has received the Early Career Researcher Award from Biology of Sex Differences and leads multi-institute NIH projects funded by the Office of Research on Women’s Health.
What Primates Societies
Reveal about Sex/Gender
Differences Relevant to
Human Health
Prof. Dr. Erica van de Waal, The Sense Center for Research and Innovation, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Erica van de Waal is Professor at the Sense Center for Research and Innovation and leads a long-term research program on wild primates in South Africa.
She completed her studies and PhD in Biology at the University of Neuchâtel and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of St Andrews before establishing her own research group in Switzerland.
She is the founder and director of the INKAWU Vervet Project, studying behaviour and cognition in wild vervet monkeys. Her research focuses on the evolution of sociality and the dominance between the sexes.
Can We Close the Sex Gap in Lifespan? An Evolutionary Comparative Perspective
Dr. Johanna Stärk, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Johanna Stärk is an evolutionary demographer at the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
She completed her Master’s degree in Neurobiology and Behavior at Freie Universität Berlin and earned her PhD at the Max Planck Centre on the Biodemography of Ageing in Odense, Denmark.
Her research investigates the evolutionary origins of ageing across the tree of life, using demographic models to understand why species and sexes differ age differently. She examines how evolutionary constraints shape aging trajectories, how aging responds to environmental variation, and what distinguishes human aging from that of other species.