Rina Bliss is a professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and award-winning author who researches the personal and social significance of new genetic sciences. Her work centers at the intersection of sociology, psychology, and technology, offering a full-spectrum understanding of how our social worlds shape our personal worlds, affecting the health and quality of our lives.

Rina’s most recent book What’s Real About Race? Untangling Genetics, Science, and Society shares a myth-busting exploration of race and genetics, arguing that race isn’t a mere social construct, but rather a social reality.

She is also the author of Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential, which tells us what we should know about the new science of intelligence and how best to use that knowledge. With a drive to sequence people for genetic markers associated with IQ, cutting-edge research into how our genes respond to our environments shows us that hacking our DNA might not actually boost our brains. Rina gives us alternatives and a completely new outlook on the meaning of intelligence and asks the question: how would your life change if you could really thrive?

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 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 is also the author of Race Decoded (Stanford University Press) and Social by Nature (Stanford University Press).

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.