Whitney Cummings + Moran Cerf

Does gender influence the way you think about the future? In what promises to be a lively interactive session, neuroscientist Moran Cerf enlists comedian Whitney Cummings to help test some assumptions that gender substantively influences the way we think about the things that matter—in particular our outlook on the future. Whitney Cummings’s new film and directorial debut, The Female Brain, hits theaters in February.

The Female Brain will be in theaters on February 9.

Brainwave is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speakers

 

Whitney Cummings is a comedian, actor, writer, producer and director. Best known for creating and starring in the NBC series Whitney, she also co-created and co-wrote the Emmy-nominated CBS series 2 Broke Girls. Whitney makes her directorial debut with the feature adaptation of the bestselling book The Female Brain, which she also co-wrote and stars in. The film comically details the power of brain chemistry among couples at different stages of their relationships and will be released on March 9. Whitney recently released her first book, I’m Fine”¦And Other Lies, to much acclaim, and she currently serves as an executive producer and writer for ABC’s highly anticipated Roseanne reboot premiering on March 28.

Moran Cerf is a professor of neuroscience and business at the Kellogg School of Management and the neuroscience program at Northwestern University. As a member of the Institute on Complex Systems, and visiting faculty at the MIT Media Lab, his research uses methods from neuroscience to understand the underlying mechanisms of our psychology. He has discussed aspects of his research on behavior changes, emotion, decision-making and dreams with actors Giancarlo Esposito and Jake Gyllenhaal on stage at the Rubin.

Recently his focus has been on the neural mechanisms that underlie decision making, thereby offering a new perspective on predicting future choices and investigating how much free will we have in our decisions. In his work, Professor Cerf studies patients undergoing brain surgery by recording the activity of individual nerve cells using electrodes implanted in the patient’s brain, offering a novel way to understand our psyche by observing the brain directly from within.

Dr. Cerf holds a PhD in neuroscience from Caltech, as well as an MA in Philosophy and a BSc in Physics from Tel-Aviv University.

Dr. Cerf is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor at the American Film Institute (AFI), where he teaches an annual screenwriting class on science in films, and is a consultant to various Hollywood films and TV shows, such as CBS’s Bull and Limitless, USA Network’s Mr. Robot and Falling Water, and more. Most importantly, he is left-handed.