Scheduled speakers to date for Science + Society include:
Keynotes
Al Gore
45th Vice President of the U.S.
Since leaving office, Vice President Al Gore has carved a considerable business career. In November 2004 he was appointed chairman of Generation Investment Management, a new London-based fund management firm that creates environment-friendly portfolios. Since 2001 he’s served as Senior Advisor to Google, on the Board of Directors of Apple Computer since 2003 and is President of the recently-launched and critically-acclaimed Current TV, a cable television network aimed at 18–24-year-olds which is best described as a cross between MTV and CNN. Former Vice President Al Gore’s political career began when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976 where he served eight years representing the then 4th District of Tennessee. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and was re-elected in 1990, becoming the first candidate in modern history — Republican or Democratic — to win all 95 of Tennessee’s counties. Gore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993.
During the administration, Gore was a central member of President Clinton’s economic team — helping to design the program that led to the strong US economy, casting the tie-breaking Senate vote for the plan in 1993, helping to pass the first balanced budget in 30 years. He helped usher in the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history — with over 18 million new jobs, wages rising twice the rate of inflation, the lowest African-American and Hispanic poverty on record, the highest level of private home ownership ever, more investment in our cities, and the lowest unemployment in 29 years.
Mr. Gore served as President of the Senate, a Cabinet member, a member of the National Security Council, and as the leader of a wide range of Administration initiatives, including the fight for the V-Chip, Family and Medical Leave, and more high-quality children’s programming on TV. He has worked to dramatically expand lifelong learning for the 21st century, and increase investments in quality after-school care. He has taken the lead in reinventing government to make it cost less and work better. And he has been a champion of administration efforts to create new jobs and growth in cities across America, to build more livable communities, to fight terrorism and make air travel safer, and to enact the toughest-ever measures to cut off children’s access to tobacco.
Together with Tipper Gore, Al Gore has been one of the strongest voices for America’s families, and their annual Family Reunion policy conference in Nashville has promoted new initiatives strengthening fatherhood, increasing flexibility for mothers and fathers in the workplace, and giving parents more control over information that comes into their homes.
To help create a federal government that works better and costs less, Vice President Gore led the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. The initiative has been critical to balancing the federal budget — saving taxpayers more than $137 billion, eliminating 16,000 pages of regulations and 640,000 pages of internal rules, and reducing the size of the federal government to its smallest level since President John F. Kennedy’s Administration. This effort has helped to make American government smaller, leaner, and more dynamic — to keep up with the fast-moving global economy and Information Age.
Since his days in the House and Senate, Gore’s environmental record is unparalleled. His pioneering efforts to protect the earth’s ozone layer and to clean up toxic-waste dumps were outlined in his best-selling book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (1992). He led the Clinton Administration’s efforts to protect the environment in a way that also strengthens the economy, such as working with the Big Three auto makers to support the development of a new generation of fuel- and energy-efficient vehicles, and working to combat global warming in a way that also creates new jobs by helping America lead the estimated $400 billion worldwide market for new technologies that clean up the environment.
Global warming is just one of many issues on which Gore was an early and visionary leader — focused on crafting solutions before many in public office were aware of the problems. As a House member, he popularized the term “Information Superhighway,” and was instrumental in fighting for federal funds for what later became the Internet. Also in the House, he held early hearings on biotechnology, and has been a national leader on cutting-edge issues such as genetic discrimination and on-line privacy and security — how to make sure we preserve our oldest and most cherished values, such as privacy and freedom from discrimination, amid fast-changing new discoveries and technologies. In the Senate, Al Gore was a leading expert on arms control and a strong voice for national defense.
Gore has remained an active leader in technology and telecommunications — helping to steer passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which promotes private investment and competition in the telecommunications industry; launched a public/private effort to wire every classroom and library in America to the Information Superhighway; and called for the creation of a new Global Information Infrastructure — a network of networks that will send messages and images at the speed of light, across every continent, to expand access to basic phone service and communications, improve the delivery of education and health care, and create new economic opportunity around the world.
Gore is a Visiting Professor teaching a course on family-centered community building at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.
On Nov. 9, 2004, Gore was appointed Chairman of Generation Investment Management, a new London-based fund management firm that plans to create environment-friendly portfolios. The company will manage assets of institutional investors, such as pension funds, foundations and endowments, as well as those of “high net worth individuals,” from offices in London and Washington. Gore is also Senior Advisor to Google, Inc. and serves on the Board of Directors of Apple Computers, Inc.
Gore was born on March 31, 1948, the son of former U.S. Senator Albert Gore, Sr. and Pauline Gore. Raised in Carthage, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., he received a degree in government with honors from Harvard University in 1969. After graduation, he volunteered for enlistment in the U.S. Army and served in the Vietnam War. Upon returning from Vietnam, Gore became an investigative reporter with the Tennessean in Nashville, where he also attended Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School and then Law School.
In 1970, Al Gore married the former Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Aitcheson and together they have four children: Karenna, Kristin, Sarah, and Albert III. In 1999, Karenna and her husband, Dr. Drew Schiff, gave birth to their first child, Wyatt Gore Schiff. In 2001, Wyatt’s sister Anna Hunger Schiff was born.
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Shirley Ann Jackson
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson became the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on July 1, 1999. She holds a Ph.D. in theoretical elementary particle physics from M.I.T. (1973) and a S.B. in physics from M.I.T. (1968). Dr. Jackson’s research specialty is in theoretical condensed matter physics, especially layered systems, and the physics of opto-electronic materials. She is immediate past President (2004) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and currently Chairman of the AAAS Board of Directors. The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society. In 2003, she delivered the William Carey Lecture of the AAAS. She has been named as one of seven 2004 fellows of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS). AWIS is dedicated to achieving equity and full participation of women in all fields of science and technology.
Jackson’s career prior to becoming Rensselaer’s president has encompassed senior positions in government, as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; in industry and research, as a theoretical physicist at the former AT&T Bell Laboratories; and in academe, as a professor of theoretical physics at Rutgers University.
Jackson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2001). She also is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991), and the American Physical Society (1986). She is a member of a number of other professional organizations. Jackson holds 35 honorary doctoral degrees. In January 2001, Jackson received the “Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award” from the American Association of Physics Teachers.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange (since December, 2003). She serves on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution and as a director of IBM Corporation, FedEx Corporation, Marathon Oil Corporation, Medtronic Inc., and Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated. She serves as a Trustee of the Brookings Institution, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She also serves on the Executive Committee of the Council on Competitiveness. She is a Life Member of the M.I.T. Corporation (the M.I.T. Board of Trustees). She also is a Trustee of Georgetown University, and the Emma Willard School (Troy, N.Y.).
Dr. Jackson serves on the U.S. Comptroller-General’s Advisory Committee for the Government Accounting Office (GAO). She was a member of the National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She previously served on the Advisory Committee for the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
In 1995 President William Clinton appointed Jackson to serve as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). She was Chairman of the NRC from 1995-1999. As Chairman, she was the principal executive officer of and the official spokesman for the NRC. She had ultimate authority for all NRC functions pertaining to an emergency involving an NRC licensee. The NRC is charged with the protection of the public health and safety, the environment, and the common defense and security by licensing, regulating, and safeguarding the use of reactor byproduct material in the U.S. This includes power reactors; research, test, and training reactors; fuel cycle facilities; reactor byproduct use in medicine, industry and research; the transportation, storage, and disposal of high-level and low-level radioactive waste; and the licensing of nuclear exports for peaceful uses.
While at the NRC, Jackson initiated a strategic assessment and rebaselining of the agency, leading to a new planning, budgeting, and performance management system that put the NRC on a more businesslike footing in its activities. She also introduced risk-informed, performance-based regulation to the NRC (utilizing probabilistic risk assessment on a consistent basis), which is now being infused throughout its regulatory programs. Elements of the approach also have been incorporated into the regulatory programs of other nations. She led the development of a new reactor oversight program, and created, with the Commission, a license renewal process resulting in the first renewal (in March 2000) of the license of an operating reactor in the United States.
While Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Jackson spearheaded the formation of the International Nuclear Regulators Association (INRA) in May 1997, and was elected as the group’s first chairman, a position she held from 1997 to 1999. The association is made up of the most senior nuclear regulatory officials from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As the first INRA chairman, Jackson guided its development as a high-level forum to examine issues, and to offer assistance to other nations, on matters of nuclear safety.
While at the NRC, Jackson represented the United States (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998) as a delegate to the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.
Prior to her government service, Jackson served on the Advisory Council of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), and served on several corporate boards of directors. Jackson also was a member of a number of high-level commissions in the State of New Jersey, including the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology. In 1994 Jackson was a member of the U.S. Department of Energy Task Force on the future of its multipurpose National Laboratories (the “Galvin” Commission). She also has served on a number of committees of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.
From 1991 to 1995, Jackson was professor of physics at Rutgers University, where she taught undergraduate and graduate students, conducted research on the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional systems, and supervised Ph.D. candidates. She concurrently served as a consultant in semiconductor theory to AT&T Bell Laboratories. From 1976 to 1991, Jackson conducted research in theoretical physics, solid state and quantum physics, and optical physics at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Her primary research foci were the optical and electronic properties of layered materials including transition metal dichalcogenides, electrons on the surface of liquid helium films, and strained-layer semiconductor superlattices. She is best known for her work on polaronic aspects of electrons in two-dimensional systems.
In 1993 she was awarded the New Jersey Governor’s Award in Science (the “Thomas Alva Edison Award”).
Jackson is the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate from M.I.T. — in any subject. She is one of the first two African-American women to receive a doctorate in physics in the U.S. She is the first African-American to become a Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She is both the first woman and the first African-American to serve as the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and now the first African-American woman to lead a national research university. She also is the first African-American woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
In 2002, Jackson was named one of the Top 50 Women in Science by Discover magazine, and recognized in a published book by ESSENCE titled 50 of The Most Inspiring African-Americans. She also was named one of “50 R&D Stars to Watch” by Industry Week Magazine.
She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Foundation Hall of Fame (WITI) in June 2000. WITI recognizes women technologists and scientists whose achievements are exceptional. Jackson was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998 for her significant and profound contributions as a distinguished scientist and advocate for education, science, and public policy.
Jackson was the recipient in February 2001 of the “Immortal Award” for the 15th Annual Black History Makers Award sponsored by Associated Black Charities. Also, in February 2001, Jackson became the first woman to win the Black Engineer of the Year Award by US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine. In March 2000, Jackson was awarded the Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia from the National Society of Black Engineers.
The eLeadership Award was presented in May 2000 to Jackson from the Central New York Technical Development Organization and the CASE Center at Syracuse University, recognizing leaders in technological innovation, application, or education who envision a future in which the promise of technology reaches all segments of society. In June 2000, Jackson received the “100 Women of Excellence” award from the Albany-Colonie (NY) Regional Chamber of Commerce & Women’s Business Council recognizing women who pioneered change in the community over the past century.
Dr. Jackson is married to Dr. Morris A. Washington, also a physicist. They have one son, Alan, a graduate of Dartmouth College.
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New Speakers
Timothy Ferris
emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley
Timothy Ferris's eleven books include Seeing in the Dark, The Whole Shebang, and Coming of Age in the Milky Way, which have been translated into fifteen languages and were named by The New York Times as among the leading books published in the twentieth century. A former newspaper reporter and editor of Rolling Stone magazine, he is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. His articles and essays have appeared in over 50 periodicals, among them the Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, Harper's, Life, National Geographic, Natural History, Nature, Newsweek, Time, Readers' Digest, Scientific American, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times.
Ferris wrote and narrated two television specials - "The Creation of the Universe," which has aired in network prime time annually for the past 15 years, and "Life Beyond Earth," which premiered on PBS Nov. 10, 1999. He produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music, sounds of Earth and encoded photographs launched aboard the Voyager interstellar spacecraft, and was among the journalists selected as candidates to fly aboard the Space Shuttle in 1986. Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize, the American Association for the Advancement of Science prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines at four universities. He is currently emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Larry Klein
NOVA, WGBH Boston
Larry Klein has produced scores of programs for commercial, cable and public broadcasting for the past twenty-five years. His most significant work has been for PBS, especially those programs and series produced in conjunction with the WGBH Science Unit and NOVA. Klein was Executive producer of the critically acclaimed, Peabody Award-winning series Building Big with David Macaulay and the recent Emmy Award-winning series RX for Survival: A Global Health Challenge.
Klein has also produced individual programs for the WGBH Science Unit including the NOVA presentations: Mind of a Serial Killer, What's Killing the Children and the Emmy Award-winning, Why the Towers Fell. He has produced programs for two WGBH mini-series: A Natural History of the Senses and A Science Odyssey, and he has also produced and directed a series of successful PBS family specials based on highly popular books by award-winning author-illustrator, David Macaulay. One of those specials, Roman City, also won a national Emmy Award in 1994. Additional PBS programs include: Who Plays God, a three-hour special that followed the difficult personal decision-making process for patients and families facing end-of-life care and a short special on Bioterrorism.
Klein has a Masters Degree in American History from the University of Maryland and began his career as the Theater Supervisor for the American Film Institute Theater in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He has served as a project reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation ,and he has received special citations for his work from The American Institute of Architects and former President Jimmy Carter.
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Speakers
Lauren S. Aguirre
NOVA/WGBH Boston
Lauren Aguirre is the Executive Editor for NOVA's popular and award-winning
Web site, which she launched in 1996. Under her leadership, NOVA has been at
the forefront of experimenting with ways to reach old and new audiences to
engage them meaningfully in the world of science and technology through
innovative Web sites, interactive video, podcasts, and more.
NOVA's Web team creates a companion site for every new program. Each site
features original content, including interviews, articles, and a range of
interactive content such as polls, narrated slide shows, and 360-degree
panoramas.
In 1996 and for several years afterwards, NOVA pioneered the use of
technology to bring its audience along virtually on a dozen expeditions to
such remote locations as Mount Everest, the Giza Pyramids, Antarctica, and
more.
In 2000 NOVA streamed its first full-length program on the Web. The next
year, in order to create an enhanced viewing experience, NOVA began
streaming interactive versions of full-length programs with clickable links
from the program video directly to relevant Web content.
In August of 2005 NOVA began successfully experimenting with podcasts, with
its NOVA scienceNOW podcast reaching the #1 position on iTunes for two
weeks, and with another podcast series on Einstein's equation E = mc2
reaching the #2 position on iTunes.
In order to explore new ways to engage with its audience, Aguirre's team
began work in the fall of 2006 on an Open Source project for an upcoming
NOVA program on the "Car of the Future."
From 1995 to 1997 Aguirre served as NOVA's science editor, responsible for
finding and researching new program ideas, reviewing proposals and programs
in production, and working with independent producers during the editing
process. Prior to that, Aguirre was a producer on several NOVA documentaries
("In Search of Human Origins," "Rescue Mission in Space," "Doomsday
Asteroid"), and worked as associate producer or production assistant on nine
earlier NOVA documentaries.
Aguirre graduated Phi Beta Kappa from MIT in 1986 with a B.S. in science
writing and a minor in Russian.
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Connie Bertka
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Dr. Connie Bertka is Program Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. The program facilitates exchange between the religious community and the scientific community in order to both improve the level of scientific understanding in religious communities, and to encourage collaboration among the two communities to address critical multidisciplinary issues. Bertka received her Ph.D. in Geology from Arizona State University in 1991. The focus of her research in Planetary Geology has been exploring the origin and evolution of terrestrial planets. She was a Senior Research Associate at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1993 to 2000. Much of her work at the Geophysical Laboratory focused on modeling the interior structure and composition of Mars utilizing data from high-pressure laboratory experiments. She also directed the Laboratory’s educational outreach program for undergraduates. In addition to her scientific work, Bertka has had a long term interest in the relationships between science and religion and their influence on public understanding of science. She also holds a Master of Theological Studies degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. While at AAAS she has initiated projects that encourage constructive interaction between the scientific community and society at large on a diverse range of topics including astrobiology, bioresponsibility, and evolution.
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Deborah Blum
University of Wisconsin
Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin. She worked as a newspaper science writer for 15 years, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her writing about primate research, which she turned into a book, The Monkey Wars. Her most recent book, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, was published in August. She is also author of Sex on the Brain and Love at Goon Park and co-editor of A Field Guide for Science Writers. She has written about scientific research for The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Discover, Health, Psychology Today, and Mother Jones. among other publications. She is a past-president of the National Association of Science Writers and currently serves on the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences and the program committee of the World Federation of Science Journalists. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband, two sons, and a very large boxer.
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Jeffrey Brown
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (PBS)
Jeffrey Brown is senior correspondent for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (PBS), responsible for moderating studio discussions and reporting from the field.
Mr. Brown joined the NewsHour in 1988. As a correspondent, he has profiled dozens of leading American and international writers, musicians and other artistic figures. He's reported many of the program's segments on developments in science and scientific research. And he's conducted hundreds of studio interviews on a wide range of national and international news topics. As a senior producer for more than a decade, Mr. Brown oversaw the NewsHour's coverage in many areas.
His work as correspondent and producer has garnered an Emmy Award, four Cine Golden Eagles, and many other honors.
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David Charbonneau
Harvard University, Department of Astronomy
David Charbonneau joined the faculty in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University in August 2004. His research focuses on the development of novel techniques for the detection and characterization of planets orbiting nearby, Sun-like stars. Dr. Charbonneau is a founding member of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, which uses a worldwide network of small telescopes to survey tens of thousands of stars for periodic eclipses that indicate the passage of orbiting planets. He led the teams that used NASA space telescopes to conduct the first study of the atmosphere of a planet outside the Solar system, and to make the first direct detection of light from such a world. At Harvard, he teaches a large introductory course in which students employ interactive tools to understand basic physics and astronomy through the lens of hunting for planets orbiting other stars.
Dr. Charbonneau earned his PhD in astronomy from Harvard University, and received his undergraduate degree in math and physics from the University of Toronto. In 2004, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific awarded him the Robert J. Trumpler Award for his graduate thesis entitled "Shadows and Reflections of Extrasolar Planets". He was recently named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and awarded a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.
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Bruce M. Cohen
Shervert Frazier Research Institute
Bruce M. Cohen is Director of the Shervert Frazier Research Institute and the Stanley Research Center at McLean Hospital and leads a consortium of investigators and clinicians using laboratory, brain imaging and clinical research techniques to develop new treatments of the most severe psychiatric disorders. He has been a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School since 1995.
Dr. Cohen is also President and Psychiatrist in Chief Emeritus at McLean Hospital, having led McLean from 1997 through 2005. McLean Hospital is the largest psychiatric component of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare System and the largest psychiatric clinical, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Under Dr. Cohen?s leadership, McLean became financially stable, raised $85 million in donations and grew to treat more patients, perform more research and teach more trainees than at any time in its distinguished history.
Previously, as Senior Vice President for Research and Teaching, Dr. Cohen was responsible for oversight of all research activities and research administration at McLean, which has the nation?s largest program of research in a private psychiatric hospital. Dr. Cohen was Director of the McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program, and co-founder and Co-director of the MGH/McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program. He was the founding Director of the McLean Brain Imaging Center.
Following undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduate and medical studies at Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Cohen completed his residency training at McLean Hospital, where he established a clinical practice and an externally funded program of clinical and laboratory-based research. Administratively, he has served as Associate General Director at McLean Hospital, responsible for oversight of research and education as well as clinical services in psychotic disorders and child and geriatric psychiatry. He has taught at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as to academic and lay audiences on psychiatric research, education and care at institutions and meetings nation- and worldwide.
Dr. Cohen is a board-certified psychiatrist with a Ph.D. in biology. His research activities focus on the diagnosis and treatment of patients with psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, and psychiatric disorders of late life. In this work, he has used brain imaging, epidemiologic, pharmacologic, molecular and animal model approaches to study psychiatric illness. Dr. Cohen is a Laureate Investigator of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression and the author of 407 publications, including 190 manuscripts of original research in peer reviewed journals.
Dr. Cohen is a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been an editorial board member of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychopharmacology and the Harvard Review of Psychiatry and a peer reviewer for numerous other major journals in psychiatry and science. He has been a member and chairperson of several federal grant review committees and is a Scientific Advisory Board member of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression and the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the two largest funders of psychiatric research outside the federal government. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
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Rita Colwell
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Colwell served as the 11th Director of the National Science Foundation from 1998-2004, and is currently Distinguished University Professor both at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Chairman of Canon US Life Sciences, Inc. Her interests are focused on global infectious diseases, water, and health, and she is currently developing an international network to address emerging infectious diseases and water issues, including safe drinking water for both the developed and developing world.
In her capacity as NSF Director, she served as Co-chair of the Committee on Science of the National Science and Technology Council. One of her major interests include K-12 science and mathematics education, graduate science and engineering education and the increased participation of women and minorities in science and engineering.
Dr. Colwell has held many advisory positions in the U.S. Government, nonprofit science policy organizations, and private foundations, as well as in the international scientific research community. She is a nationally-respected scientist and educator, and has authored or co-authored 16 books and more than 700 scientific publications. She produced the award-winning film, Invisible Seas, and has served on editorial boards of numerous scientific journals.
Before going to NSF, Dr. Colwell was President of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and Professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology at the University Maryland. She was also a member of the National Science Board from 1984 to 1990.
Dr. Colwell has previously served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the American Academy of Microbiology and also as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Washington Academy of Sciences, the American Society for Microbiology, the Sigma Xi National Science Honorary Society, and the International Union of Microbiological Societies. Dr. Colwell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, the Royal Society of Canada, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
Dr. Colwell has also been awarded 47 honorary degrees from institutions of higher education, including her Alma Mater, Purdue University and is the recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan. Dr. Colwell is an honorary member of the microbiological societies of the UK, Australia, France, Israel, Bangladesh, and the U.S. and has held several honorary professorships, including the University of Queensland, Australia. A geological site in Antarctica, Colwell Massif, has been named in recognition of her work in the polar regions.
Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, Dr. Colwell holds a B.S. in Bacteriology and an M.S. in Genetics, from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Washington.
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Lester M. Crystal
NewsHour
Les Crystal joined the NewsHour as its executive producer in 1983, and was instrumental in preparing the program for its debut as the nation's first hour-long newscast. He served as the executive producer for 22 years, and in November 2005 moved to his current position as president of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
Formerly president of NBC News (1977-79), and executive producer of the NBC Nightly News (1973-76), Les spent 20-years with NBC serving as the chief producer of European news; participating in the press corps that covered President Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China; and serving as the news division's executive vice president. As vice president for affiliate news, Les oversaw the sizable expansion of news feeds from the network to affiliated stations. In 1976 and 1980, he was executive producer of NBC's election night and convention coverage, and he supervised all political and special news programming from 1980 to 1982.
Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Les earned a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and began his broadcasting career in Duluth as a news writer for KDAL radio and television. He was later news director at both WFBG-TV/Radio in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and WFIL-TV in Philadelphia.
In 1963, Les joined NBC in Chicago to produce WMAQ's nightly news and its Emmy-winning documentary series, Dateline Chicago. In 1965, he joined The Huntley-Brinkley Report as Chicago regional manager, moving from there to New York in 1967 to serve first as the program's news editor, then associate producer. He was the Emmy-winning program's producer from 1968 to 1970.
Les is married, has three children and lives in Washington D.C. and Scarsdale, New York.
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Andrew Dobson
Princeton University
Dr. Andrew Dobson is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1990. His main areas of interest are:the application of theoretical ecology to problems in the areas of conservation biology and control of infectious diseases; population dynamics and control of infectious diseases in natural populations; and population dynamics and life history strategies of birds and mammals, especially primates, elephants, and marine mammals.
A leading scientist in his field and a prolific author, he has taught at the University of Rochester, London University, and Oxford University. His works include: The Ecology of Wildlife Diseases; Ecology and Evolution of Parasites and Infectious Diseases; Wildlife Epidemiology; Genetics and the Extinction of Species; Conservation and Biodiversity; and many refereed articles in prominent scientific journals. In addition, he serves on the editorial board of: Trends in Ecology and Evolution: Frontiers in Ecology; and PLOS Biology.He is also conservation editor of Natural Resource Modeling and an ad hoc referee for numerous other scientific journals (American Naturalist, Conservation Biology, Science, Nature, and others).
Dr. Dobson has served on the Millennium Assessment team, the U.S. Diversity Committee, the International Committee for Diversities, the Organizing Committee of the International Biodiversity Observation Year, and numerous other national and international biodiversity panels. He is the winner of the Deutsche Umwelstiftun prize for Environmental Reading.
He has given many invited addresses and seminars. A few of the most recent include: Plenary Speaker at the Jacques Chirac Symposium on Biodiversity in Paris; the Co-Chair of the Symposium of Mathematics of Infectious Disease; NCEA Working Group on Seasonality and Infectious Diseases; the Working Group of Global Change and Malaria; a Marine health symposium at Scripps Institute of Oceanography; the Wildlife Disease Association; the Society for Conservation Biology; the NECEAS Team on Tropical Biodiversity; a University of Texas address on ?Infectious Diseases from Nature;? and an address, Interactions between Global Change and Human Health; and many others.
He has overseen major projects with support from numerous government agencies and foundations:NIH, NOAA, NSF/NIH, USAID, the Geraldine Dodge Foundation, the Environmental Defense Fund, the African Wildlife Foundation; the New York Zoological Society,the National Park Service, and others.
Dr. Dobson also has extensive experience working with radio, television and the media. He was the chief scientific consultant for the PBS series, Outbreak; the IMAX film Lost Worlds:Life in the Balance; Voyages of Natural Discovery; Living World; Science Friday; and a photographic exhibit, Young Girl Carrying Firewood
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John Durant
MIT Museum
John Durant, a museum director and academic researcher with extensive experience at some of England's leading science museums, is currently the director of the MIT Museum and Adjunct Professor in the Science, Technology & Society Program at MIT. Durant has focused much of his career on promoting public engagement with science and technology. He served as the world's first Professor of Public Understanding of Science while at Imperial College, London and most recently was the head of At-Bristol, a science and natural history center in Bristol, England. A native of Norwich, England, Durant received the M.A. in natural science in 1972 and the Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science in 1977 from Queens' College at the University of Cambridge. He currently lives in Watertown, Massachusetts with his family.
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Edna Einsiedel
University of Calgary
Edna Einsiedel is University Professor and Professor of Communication Studies in the Faculty of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. Her research interests are in the social issues around genomics and biotechnology. She has investigated approaches to public engagement and participation on these technologies and has used deliberative models such as the consensus conference, citizen jury, and scenario workshops. She is currently co-leader on a GE3LS project (Genomics, Ethics, Economic, Environmental, Legal and Social Studies) on Genomics Knowledge Translation in Health Systems, supported by Genome Canada. Her research has also been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. Her publications have appeared in diverse journals such as Science, Nature Biotechnology, Public Understanding of Science, Science Communication, and Science and Engineering Ethics. She is the current editor of the international journal Public Understanding of Science, published by Sage.
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Mauro Ferrari
Brown Institute of Molecular Medicine
Dr. Ferrari serves as: Professor, Brown Institute of Molecular Medicine, Chairman, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Professor of Experimental Therapeutics, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston TX., Professor of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston TX., Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston TX. and President, of the Alliance for NanoHealth, Houston TX.
Dr. Mauro Ferrari is a founder of biomedical nano-/micro-technology, especially pertaining to drug delivery, cell transplantation, implantable bioreactors, and other innovative therapeutic modalities. In these fields, he has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal article and six books (two more are in preparation). He is the inventor of more than 20 issued patents, with about thirty more pending in the US and internationally. His contributions have been recognized by a variety of accolades, including the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation, a Shannon Director's Award of the National Institutes of Health, and the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship. His career research and development portfolio totals over $30 million, including support from the NIH, NSF, DARPA, DoE, as well as the Board of Regents of the State of Ohio, The Ohio State University, and private enterprises such as Roche, Boehringer-Mannheim, Alcoa, Vion Pharmaceuticals, and iMEDD. He began his academic career at the University of California, Berkeley, where he tenured in Material Science, Civil Engineering, and Bioengineering. Upon recruitment to the Ohio State University, he served as the Edgar Hendrickson Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Internal Medicine, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Associate Vice President, Health Sciences Technology and Commercialization, Associate Director of the Dorothy M. Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute and Director of the Biomedical Engineering Center.
Dr. Ferrari also served as Special Expert on Nanotechnology at the National Cancer Institute in 2003-2005, providing leadership into the formulation, refinement, and approval of the NCI's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, currently the world's largest program in medical nanotechnology.
Dr. Ferrari?s degrees are in Mathematic (Padova, 1985, Italy), and Mechanical Engineering (U.C. Berkeley, M.S. 1987, & Ph.D. 1989). He attended medical school at the Ohio State University (2002-03).
Dr. Ferrari is the Editor-in-Chief of Biomedical Microdevices: BioMEMS and Biomedical NanoTechnology (Springer Publisher), the first academic journal dedicated to these fields. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Springer?s book series of Biomedical Technologies.
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Julie Louise Gerberding
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Julie Louise Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H. became the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) on July 3, 2002.
Before becoming CDC Director and ATSDR Administrator, Dr. Gerberding was Acting Deputy Director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), where she played a major role in leading CDC’s response to the anthrax bioterrorism events of 2001. She joined CDC in 1998 as Director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, NCID, where she developed CDC’s patient safety initiatives and other programs to prevent infections, antimicrobial resistance, and medical errors in healthcare settings. Prior to coming to CDC, Dr. Gerberding was a University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) faculty member and directed the Prevention Epicenter, a multidisciplinary research, training, and clinical service program that focused on preventing infections in patients and their healthcare providers. Dr. Gerberding is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at Emory University and an Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at UCSF.
She earned a B.A. magna cum laude in chemistry and biology and an M.D. at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Gerberding then completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at UCSF, where she also served as Chief Medical Resident before completing her fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology and Infectious Diseases at UCSF. She earned an M.P.H. degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.
Dr. Gerberding is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Omega Alpha (medical honor society), American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), American College of Physicians, Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Epidemiology Society, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Institute of Medicine.
In the past, Dr. Gerberding served as a member of CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases’ Board of Scientific Counselors, the CDC HIV Advisory Committee, and the Scientific Program Committee, National Conference on Human Retroviruses. She has also been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Association, CDC, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National AIDS Commission, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and the World Health Organization.
Dr. Gerberding's editorial activities have included appointment to the Editorial Board of the Annals of Internal Medicine, appointment as an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Medicine, and service as a peer-reviewer for numerous internal medicine, infectious diseases, and epidemiology journals. Her scientific interests encompass patient safety and prevention of infections and antimicrobial resistance among patients and their healthcare providers. She has authored or co-authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications and textbook chapters and contributed to numerous guidelines and policies relevant to HIV prevention, post-exposure prophylaxis, management of infected healthcare personnel, and healthcare-associated infection prevention.
Dr. Gerberding resides in Atlanta with her husband, David, who is a software engineer. Her step-daughter Renada is a law student at the University of Virginia. Dr. Gerberding relaxes by scuba diving, reading on the beach, gardening, and doting on her three cats.
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Lavinia Greenlaw
Poet
Lavinia Greenlaw has published three books of poems, most recently Minsk, and two novels: Mary George of Allnorthover and An Irresponsible Age. She has also collaborated with the photographic artist Garry Fabian Miller on Thoughts of a Night Sea. Her first book of non-fiction, The Importance of Music to Girls, will be published in 2007. In 2000 she was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in order to pursue her interest in optical technologies and perception. She has held residencies at the Science Museum, the Royal Festival Hall, and the Royal Society of Medicine, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her work for BBC radio includes programmes about the Arctic and the Baltic, the solstices and equinoxes, and several dramas. She has also written opera libretti and song cycles. She teaches at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
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Catherine Hughes
Museum Theatre expert
Catherine Hughes wrote Museum Theatre: Communicating with Visitors through Drama (1998). She has spoken widely on the use of theatre in museums and presented workshops in the U.S., U.K, Sweden, and Australia. For many years, she coordinated the Theatre Program at the Museum of Science, Boston, and was the founding executive director of the International Museum Theatre Alliance. She is finishing a Ph.D. in education at Ohio State University's School of Teaching and Learning. Her research focuses on how performance affects memory and learning.
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Emlyn Koster
Liberty Science Center
Emlyn Koster, a science museum CEO for the past two decades, is currently at the helm of one of the museum field's most relevancy-minded renewal projects. Internationally experienced and dedicated to improving the links between science and society, he is a prominent writer and speaker about the external responsibilities of science museums as well as an active contributor to their main professional bodies.
President and CEO of Liberty Science Center since 1996, he is leading the institution in a demand-driven $110m capital project under the banner of Connections: Our Community, Our World. In partnership with the region's public and private sectors, this encompasses major expansion and renovation as well as extensive exhibition and program enhancement. New Jersey's most visited museum and one of the New York City metro region's top-rated cultural destinations, Liberty Science Center is in Liberty State Park, Jersey City, next to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Opened in 1993 and expanded by mid-2007, its innovative benchmarks for the science museum field feature inclusive approaches to audience, regional relevancy of onsite, offsite and online content, extensive involvement with preK -12 education and teacher professional development, and instructive applications of videoconferencing and cell phones. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Center assisted in a wide variety of emergency roles that went on to shape thinking in the museum field about different roles when disaster strikes.
Born in Egypt's Suez Canal Zone and then moving to England, he earned a BSc in geology at the University of Sheffield. In 1971, he immigrated to Canada and earned his PhD in geology at the University of Ottawa. Faculty positions in Montreal and Saskatchewan followed. After coal exploration and dinosaur fieldwork in a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Alberta and in China's Gobi Desert, his career focus shifted to the public's view of science. From 1986-91, he directed a new natural history museum near Calgary with Queen Elizabeth II bestowing royal appellation upon it in 1989. From 1991-96 as CEO at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, a pioneer among interactive museums, he led a major facility and exhibition renewal program. In 1994, he was honored by the Government of France with a Chevalier Medal in the l'Ordre des Palmes Academique and in 1996 was elected by the Geological Association of Canada as its 50th anniversary president.
His learning experiences include travel to over 50 countries on all continents. Past and present appointments include the International Council of Museums board of the American Association of Museums, Committee on Public Understanding of Science and Technology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the boards of the Giant Screen Cinema Association, Institute for Learning Innovation, Challenger Center for Space Science Education and Association of Science-Technology Centers. His 45 publications in the museum field address topics he believes ought to be at the forefront of its leadership thinking - namely, relevancy to social and environmental opportunities and challenges. The latest contributions are an invited essay entitled "The Relevant Museum: a Reflection on Sustainability" in the centennial issue of Museum News of the American Association of Museums and an invited opening article for a special commemorative issue of Curator: The Museum Journal. Recent invitations for speaking engagements have brought him to Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Japan. Invited facilitation and resource roles in strategic planning recently include museums in Australia, Canada, Japan, UK and the USA.
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Lawrence Krauss
Case Western Reserve University
Lawrence Krauss is Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy, and Director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics. Krauss received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 and then joined the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He was appointed to the faculty of physics and astronomy at Yale University in 1985, and then joined Case Western Reserve University as Chair of Physics in 1993. He is the author of seven popular books, including the international bestseller The Physics of Star Trek, the award-winning Atom, and his newest book, Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions from Plato to String Theory and Beyond. Krauss is also a regular radio commentator and essayist for newspapers including The New York Times, and appears regularly on television. He is one of the few well-known scientists today described by such magazines as Scientific American as a public intellectual, and with activities including performing with the Cleveland Orchestra, he has also crossed the chasm between science and popular culture. At the same time he is a highly-regarded international leader in cosmology and astrophysics, and is the author of over 200 papers, winner of numerous international awards for his research accomplishments and his writing (he is, for example, the only physicist to have been awarded the highest awards of the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics) and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been particularly active leading the effort by scientists to defend the teaching of science in public schools. His essay in The New York Times on evolution and intelligent design, in May 2005, helped spur the recent controversy that has involved the Catholic Church.
http://www.phys.cwru.edu/~krauss
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Raju Kucherlapati
Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics
Raju Kucherlapati is Scientific Director, Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics, Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Raju Kucherlapati came to the United States in 1967 after completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in India. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana and did his post-doctoral at Yale University after which he held teaching at Princeton University and at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. In 1989 Dr. Kucherlapati went to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he was the Lola and Saul Kramer Professor of Molecular Genetics and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics. In 2001 Dr. Kucherlapati became Professor of Medicine and the Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and the first Scientific Director of the Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics. Dr. Kucherlapati?s research interests include cloning of human disease genes and the generation and characterization of mouse models for human disease. To date he holds 12 patents. He was a member of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research at the National Human Genomics Research Institute, and currently serves as co-chair of the steering committee for the National Cancer Institute?s Mouse Models for Human Cancer Consortium. He serves on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and was editor in chief of the journal Genomics. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Kucherlapati was a founder of Cell Genesys and of Millennium Pharmaceuticals. He currently serves on the board of Millennium Pharmaceuticals and on the board of privately held AVEO Pharmaceuticals.
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Jennifer Lawson
Howard University Television
Jennifer Lawson is general manager of Howard University Television, WHUT-TV, a post she has held since June 2004, and she serves as executive producer for its national media specials and series. In her first year with WHUT-TV, she raised over $2 million to assist the station’s transition to digital media and has subsequently raised significant additional funding to improve the station’s infrastructure.
For nine years prior to WHUT-TV, she was a producer and independent media specialist. She co-produced an eight-hour television series, AFRICA, in association with Thirteen, New York and National Geographic Television. This award-winning series, which portrays Africa through African eyes, was developed from ideas based on her experiences in Africa. The series premiered nationwide on PBS and internationally in over 130 countries to critical acclaim in September 2001.
From 1989 to 1995, she was Executive Vice President, Programming and Promotion Services, PBS. She was public television's first chief programming executive and was responsible for the scheduling and promotional strategies that resulted in PBS's two most successful series, The Civil War and Baseball. She developed several highly regarded children's series including Barney & Friends, Lamb Chop’s Play-Along, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? which increased children's viewing of public television over 100% in three seasons and resulted in the most watched week in PBS history in January 1993.
Before joining PBS, she directed the Television Program Fund at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting where she commissioned hundreds of successful programs. Prior to CPB, she was chief executive officer of The Film Fund, a New York foundation supporting independent filmmakers. She taught film at Brooklyn College for three years, produced two documentaries, and worked as a screenwriter and children's book illustrator.
She was recognized as one of "the 101 Most Influential People in Entertainment" in 1990 by Entertainment Weekly and as one of the "Power 50," or fifty most influential women in entertainment, by The Hollywood Reporter in 1994. She is a member of the board of trustees of PBS, American Public Television, the Advisory Board of Washington Women in Film and Video and the Community Advisory Board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She attended Tuskegee University and holds a master of fine arts degree in film production from Columbia University.
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Alan I. Leshner
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Dr. Leshner has been Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of the journal Science since December 2001. AAAS (triple A-S) was founded in 1848 and is the world's largest, multi-disciplinary scientific and engineering society.
Before coming to AAAS, Dr. Leshner was Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1994-2001. One of the scientific institutes of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NIDA supports over 85% of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.
Before becoming Director of NIDA, Dr. Leshner had been the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He went to NIMH from the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he held a variety of senior positions, focusing on basic research in the biological, behavioral and social sciences, science policy and science education.
Dr. Leshner went to NSF after 10 years at Bucknell University, where he was Professor of Psychology. He has also held long-term appointments at the Postgraduate Medical School in Budapest, Hungary; at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center; and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Dr. Leshner is the author of a major textbook on the relationship between hormones and behavior, and has published over 150 papers for both the scientific and lay communities on the biology of behavior, science and technology policy, science education, and public engagement with science.
Dr. Leshner received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physiological psychology from Rutgers University. He also holds honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Franklin and Marshall College and the Pavlov Medical University in St. Petersburg, Russia. Dr. Leshner is an elected fellow of AAAS, the National Academy of Public Administration, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and many other professional societies. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. The U.S. President appointed Dr. Leshner to the National Science Board in 2004. He is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of NIH, and represents AAAS on the U.S. Commission for UNESCO.
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Alan Lightman
Writer and physicist, Adjunct Professor in Humanities, MIT
Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist born in Memphis, Tennessee
in 1948, son of Richard Lightman, a movie theater owner, and Jeanne Garretson, a
dancing teacher and volunteer Braille typist.
From an early age, he was entranced by both science and the arts and, while in
high school, began independent science projects and writing poetry. He graduated
from White Station High School in Memphis. Lightman received his AB degree in
physics from Princeton University in 1970, magna cum laude, where he was Phi
Beta Kappa. He earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the California
Institute of Technology in 1974; his thesis advisor was relativist Kip Thorne.
From 1974 to 1976, Lightman was a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at Cornell
University. During this period, he began publishing poetry in small literary
magazines. He was an Assistant Professor of astronomy at Harvard University from
1976 to 1979 and from 1979 to 1989 a research scientist at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 2005, Lightman received an
Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Bowdoin College. He currently teaches at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Adjunct Professor of Humanities.
In 1981, Lightman began publishing essays about science, the human side of
science, and the "mind of science", beginning with Smithsonian and moving to
Science 82, The New Yorker, and other magazines. Since that time, Lightman's
essays, short fiction, and reviews have also appeared in The American Scholar,
The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, Dædalus, Discover, Exploratorium, Granta,
Harper's Magazine, Harvard Magazine, Inc Technology, Nature, The New York Review
of Books, The New York Times, Science 86, The Sciences, Story, Technology
Review, and World Monitor.
Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams was an international bestseller and has been
translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 PEN New England
/ Boston Globe Winship Award. Einstein's Dreams was also the March 1998
selection for National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Book Club. The novel
has been used in numerous colleges and universities, in many cases for
university-wide adoptions in "common-book" programs.
More than two dozen independent theatrical and musical productions have been
based on Einstein's Dreams, including a production at Chicago's National Pastime
Theater in 2000, produced and directed by Patrizia Acerra and Dawn Arnold; a
production at Paradise Theater in New York in 2001, produced and directed by
Paul Stancato and Brian Rhinehart; a production at the Culture Project Theater
in New York in 2003, directed by Rebecca Holderness; a production at the
People's Branch Theater in Nashville in 2003, adapted by Brian Niece and David
Alford, directed by David Alford; a musical production at the Martin Segal
Theater of CUNY in New York in 2003, produced by Brian Schwartz with music and
lyrics by Joshua Rosenblum and Joanne Lessner; a musical composition titled "In
This World" by Paul Hoffman in 2000 and performed by the Silverwood Trio on
their own CD; and a musical composition titled "When Einstein Dreams" by Nando
Michelin in 2003 and performed by the Nando Michelin Group on a Double Times
Record CD. A major musical adaptation is now being planned for the Prince
Theater in Philadelphia for the spring of 2006, directed by Marjorie Samov.
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Clare Matterson
Wellcome Trust
Clare Matterson is Director of Medicine, Society and History at the Wellcome Trust. She is a member of the Executive Board and has responsibility for Medical Humanities, all Wellcome Trust public engagement activities, including grants, exhibitions, and arts programming, and the Wellcome Library in the History of Medicine. She joined the Trust in 1999 as Head of Policy and produced the Trust?s first Strategic Plan. She spent five years as a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers where she worked on policy and implementation projects with universities, government departments, and funding councils in the UK and overseas. Clare has also worked for the Higher Education Funding Council, the Higher Education Quality Council, and the State University of New York, following receipt of a Fulbright Fellowship. Clare has a degree in Zoology from the University of Oxford. Clare is responsible for the re-development of the Wellcome Building as a cutting edge center for public engagement with biomedical science.
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Heather Mayfield
Science Museum Live
Heather Mayfield is Director of Science Museum Live at the Science Museum in London, where she is responsible for exhibitions, programmes and curatorial activities. Mayfield led the team that managed the delivery of the Dana Centre in 2004, the Museum’s center for innovative adults-only programmes that seek to bring scientists and the public together to discuss topical issues, with a strong emphasis on public engagement through the Internet. Previously, Mayfield was a leading member of the team that delivered the Museum’s Wellcome Wing, opened by the Queen in July 2000 and entirely devoted to contemporary science and technology, and led the teams that developed and delivered the award-winning exhibitions who am i? and digitopolis. Between 1994 and 1997, Mayfield managed the delivery of Science Box, the first series of interactive exhibitions on contemporary science and technology to be presented in a leading museum.
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James J. Mongan
Partners Health Care
Dr. Mongan is president and chief executive officer of Partners HealthCare in Boston, an integrated health system founded in 1994 by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.
In addition to its two academic medical centers, the Partners system also includes community hospitals, specialty hospitals, community health centers, a physician network, home health and long-term care services, and other health-related entities.
Partners is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
A professor of health care policy and a professor of social medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Mongan also serves on the board of the Commonwealth Fund and chairs its Commission on a High Performance Health System.
Prior to being appointed president and CEO of Partners, Dr. Mongan was president of Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest and oldest teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. He also served for 15 years as executive director of the Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, a large public hospital, where he also served as dean of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine.
Dr. Mongan spent 11 years in Washington as staff to the Senate Finance Committee, working on Medicare and Medicaid legislation. He later served in the Carter administration as deputy assistant secretary for health and then at the White House as associate director of the domestic policy staff.
Dr. Mongan is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has served on the boards of the American Hospital Association and the Kaiser Family Foundation, and was a member of both the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission established by Congress and the Institute of Medicine’s Commission on the Consequences of Uninsurance.
A native of San Francisco, Dr. Mongan received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, and his medical degree from Stanford University Medical School. He completed his internship at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco and served for two years in the U.S. Public Health Service.
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Matthew Nisbet
American University
Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D., is assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University. Trained as a social scientist, he studies the nature and impacts of strategic communication. His current research tracks scientific and environmental controversies, examining the interactions between experts, journalists, and various publics. In this work, Nisbet focuses on several key questions: How does news coverage both reflect and shape policy? How do citizens make sense of controversies, and in what ways do strategists try to mold public opinion? What mobilizes citizens to get involved in a debate? He has studied a wide range of controversies including those over stem cell research, global warming, intelligent design, plant biotechnology, and hurricanes.
The author or co-author of twenty research articles and book chapters, his work appears across a number of leading journals including Public Opinion Quarterly, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Communication Research, Political Communication, Political Behavior, Mass Communication and Society, Science Communication, and Public Understanding of Science. Over the past three years, these studies have been cited more than a hundred times in the peer-reviewed literature.
Nisbet also contributes the monthly "Science and the Media" column for Skeptical Inquirer online, and he tracks current events related to strategic communication at his blog Framing Science, hosted by Seed magazine.
He is a frequent invited speaker at conferences and meetings across the U.S. and Canada, and he is often called upon for his expert analysis by major news organizations, with past interviews including the BBC World Service, Nature, Science, Chronicle of Higher Education, Toronto Globe & Mail, Adweek, Houston Chronicle, Salon.com, MSNBC.com, and Wisconsin Public Radio.
Nisbet has served as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, as well as other government agencies and non-governmental organizations. He holds an A.B. in Government from Dartmouth College, and an MS/Ph.D. in Communication from Cornell University.
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David G. Rabkin
Museum of Science
David Rabkin, Ph.D., is Vice President for Technologies at the Museum of Science, Boston. In this role, he bears responsibility for facilitating the Museum?s efforts to develop an approach to technology education. He is also responsible for building partnerships with academia, industry, labs and hospitals that provide intellectual, content and financial support the Museum?s educational Program and help shape overall Museum strategy. Together with the Vice Presidents for Research, Development and Production, Visitor Experience, Marketing and Information Systems and Resources, he is responsible for articulating and managing the Museum?s exhibit, program and media strategy. Most recently, he has led educational efforts in renewable energy technology and medical imaging and leads the planning of a major educational initiative in advances in human biology and medical technology.
Dr. Rabkin brings to the Museum of Science a mix of academic credentials and technical and managerial experience. He holds a doctorate in Technology and Innovation Management from MIT?s Sloan School of Management. His teaching experience includes four years of guest lecturing and teaching assistant work in masters-level technology strategy courses.
His professional experience includes over 16 years of experience in software engineering, technology and product development, general management, and strategy consulting. Prior to joining the Museum in September of 2000, Dr. Rabkin was a founding partner of HotHouse Venture Partners, an Internet strategy consulting and early-stage investment firm. Prior to Hothouse, he served Kenan Systems Corporation as Director of its Decision Support Products division. Immediately after his doctoral work, Dr. Rabkin served as manager of business development and technology assessment for BBN Systems and Technologies, focusing on research with an eye toward commercialization of BBN?s information technologies. He has eight years of software development and project management experience, six spent in the field of industrial automation.
Dr. Rabkin serves on the board of trustees of the Fenway High School in Boston and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council?s Education Foundation (MassBioEd). He holds an A.B. from Harvard University.
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Gerrit Rauws
King Baudouin Foundation
Gerrit Rauws is Director of the King Baudouin Foundation in Belgium and manages the Foundation’s health programme. Under his direction the King Baudouin Foundation became a leader in the field of participatory science and technology assessment by delivering projects on genetic testing, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, ageing and food safety. He was the project director of Meeting of Minds: European Citizens’ Deliberation on Brain Research, the most extensive public consultation on research ever organized in Europe and the first to attempt to develop a deliberative method adapted to a transnational and multilingual context. Rauws is a member of the governing board of the European Policy Center, an influential Brussels-based think tank, and of the Portaels arts school in Vilvoorde, Belgium. From 1984 to 1989 he worked as a researcher at the University of Louvain, where he received a Ph.D. in Physical Geography. He has published in international peer-reviewed journals on soil erosion processes and hill slope hydrology.
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Philip M. Sadler
F.W. Wright Senior Lecturer in Astronomy
Philip M. Sadler earned a B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1973 and taught middle school science and mathematics for several years before earning a doctorate in education in 1992. Dr. Sadler has taught Harvard's courses for new science teachers and for the next generation of professors, doctoral students in science. As F.W. Wright Senior Lecturer in Astronomy, he carries on Harvard's oldest undergraduate course in science, Celestial Navigation. He directs one of the largest research groups in science education in the U.S., based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 1999, Dr. Sadler won the Journal of Research in Science Teaching Award for work on assessing student understanding in science deemed "the most significant contribution to science education research" in the preceding year. His research interests include assessment of students' scientific misconceptions and how they change as a result of instruction, the development of computer technologies that allow youngsters to engage in research, and models for enhancement of the skills of experienced teachers. He was the executive producer of A Private Universe, an award-winning video on student conceptions in science. He won the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Brennan Prize for contributions to astronomy teaching. He is the inventor of the Starlab Portable Planetarium and many other devices used for the teaching of astronomy, worldwide. Materials and curricula developed by Dr. Sadler are used by an estimated twelve million students every year.
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Douglas Sarno
The Perspectives Group
Douglas Sarno is Principal of The Perspectives Group, based in Virginia. He has over 20 years’ experience in public participation, dispute resolution, communications, decision-making, engineering, and business management. Sarno specializes in bringing together diverse groups to discuss controversial subjects in order to make consensual recommendations. He has managed and facilitated over one thousand public meetings and seven long-term stakeholder advisory boards, and designed and facilitated over ten national stakeholder forums. Internationally, he has facilitated forums on public participation in Thailand, South Africa, and Hungary. He has designed and facilitated numerous programs, training, and retreats to conduct business quality, process re-engineering, financial planning, fundraising, and long-term strategic planning for a wide variety of government and not-for-profit organizations, including the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, and the Border Environment and Conservation Commission. In addition, Sarno has provided direct policy support to governments in The Republic of Georgia, Thailand, and Vietnam and trained representatives from dozens of countries in public participation and collaborative decision making. He served for five years as the Executive Director of the International Association for Public Participation.
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Emmanuelle Schuler
Science Café
Emmanuelle Schuler is Director of the Science Café in Houston, TX, which she launched in 2004. Three years before, she collaborated with Gert Balling to create the Science Café Copenhagen, Videnskabscafeen, which received the 2004 Genius Award for outstanding mediation of scientific issues. Schuler and Balling co-authored the book Science Café: Art, Culture, Science (Hovedland Publisher, 2004). Currently, Schuler is Technology Transfer Associate in the Office of Intellectual Property Management at the University of Houston. In 2000, she received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from McGill University, Montreal. Schuler worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Micro- and Nanotechnology National Center in Copenhagen and subsequently in the group of Professor Richard E. Smalley at Rice University in Houston. Her research interests also include the social, political and cultural ramifications of nanotechnology and their impact on society.
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Eugenie C. Scott
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
Eugenie Scott, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, Inc., a not-for-profit membership organization of scientists, teachers, and others that works to improve the teaching of evolution and of science as a way of knowing. It opposes the teaching of “scientific” creationism and other religiously-based views in science classes.
A former college professor, Scott lectures widely and is called upon by the press and other media to explain science and evolution to the general public. She is the author of the 2004 book, Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, and has served as President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Scott has been honored by both scientists and educators, receiving the National Science Board Public Service Award, the AIBS Outstanding Service Award, the Geological Society of America Public Service Award, the California Science Teachers Association Distinguished Service Award, and the National Association of Biology Teachers Honorary Membership award—the Association’s highest honor. She holds honorary D.Sc. degrees from McGill University and Ohio State University.
http://www.ncseweb.org/
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Robert Semper
Exploratorium
Rob Semper is Executive Associate Director of the Exploratorium in San Francisco and is responsible for leading the institution’s work in developing programs of teaching and learning using exhibits, media and Internet resources. He is head of the Exploratorium’s Center for Learning and Teaching which contains the institutions programs in teacher professional development, youth programming, publishing, media and Internet development. Dr. Semper is the principle investigator on numerous science education, media and research projects including leading the National Science Foundation sponsored Center for Informal Learning and Schools, a research collaboration between the Exploratorium, U.C. Santa Cruz and King’s College, London which studies the relationship between museums and formal education. He is also Co-PI on the NSF funded Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network, a national network of science centers designed to foster engagement of the public with the nanotechnology field. He leads numerous research and development projects in new media including wireless networks, handheld computing and advanced Internet applications.
Over the past fifteen years Dr. Semper has guided the development of the award winning Exploratorium Website that has explored the role of museums in the online world including the development of on-line fieldtrips to locations of scientific research. He has been executive producer for a number of NSF and NASA supported Webcast/Website projects including Origins that provides on-line fieldtrips to science observatories worldwide, four Solar Eclipse Webcasts and the Ancient Observatories project that originated live from Chaco Canyon and Chitzen Itza. Before this, Dr. Semper was a Schumann fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the creative collaboration between Apple Computer and Lucasfilm Ltd. formed to develop interactive multimedia education projects. Previous to this since joining the Exploratorium in 1977, he has lead numerous exhibit development, teacher enhancement and media development projects focused on science education for the public, teachers and students. Dr. Semper was elected to be a 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow and was the recipient of the 2006 NSTA’s Faraday Award for Science Communication, the 1994 NSTA's Informal Educator of the Year award and the 2000 Association of Science Technology Center’s Award for Innovation for the Exploratorium’s leadership in developing on-line media. He has served on numerous advisory boards including the George Lucas Educational Foundation National Advisory Board and the AAAS Committee on the Public Understanding of Science.
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Stef Steyaert
Flemish Foundation of Science and Technology Assessment
Stef Steyaert was born on the 14th of February 1967. He got his degree in Sociology at the University of Leuven (1989). Between 1989 and 1999, he worked as a researcher on technology and innovation policy. In 1999, he started working for KBC, a major Belgian bank, as a senior consultant. In April 2001, Stef Steyaert joined the Flemish Institution for Science and Technology Assessment. As a senior researcher, his responsibility lies in the design and implementation of participatory and foresight methods. Over the last five years, he has managed many projects on the societal aspects of science and technology development. He published articles on foresight and technology assessment approaches, large group interventions and ICT and elderly in peer reviewed journals. He was the co-editor of the very largely distributed ?Participatory Methods Toolkit. A practitioner?s manual?. Stef Steyaert lives in Leuven with his girlfriend and has four children: two sons and a two daughters.
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Gerald F. Wheeler
National Science Teachers Association
Gerald Wheeler is Executive Director of the National Science Teachers Association. Prior to that he was a professor of physics at Montana State University, director of MSU’s Science/Math Resource Center, program director (Public Understanding of Science and Technology) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and professor of physics at Temple University. Wheeler received his B.S. in 1963 from Boston University, with a major in science education, and his Ph.D. at SUNY Stony Brook in 1972, in experimental nuclear physics. Between undergraduate and graduate school, he taught high school physics.
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Michael Zyda
GamePipe Laboratory
Michael Zyda is the Director of the USC Viterbi School of
Engineering's GamePipe Laboratory, a Professor of Engineering
Practice in the USC Department of Computer Science, and a staff
member of USC's Information Sciences Institute, located in Marina del
Rey, California. From Fall 2000 to Fall 2004, he was the Founding
Director of The MOVES Institute, located at the Naval Postgraduate
School, Monterey, California and a Professor in the Department of
Computer Science at NPS as well. From 1986 until the founding of the
MOVES Institute, he was the Director of the NPSNET Research Group.
Professor Zyda's research interests include computer graphics, large-
scale, networked 3D virtual environments, agent-based simulation,
modeling human and organizational behavior, interactive computer-
generated story, computer-generated characters, video production,
entertainment/defense collaboration, modeling and simulation, and
serious and entertainment games. He is a pioneer in the fields of
computer graphics, networked virtual environments, modeling and
simulation, and serious games. He holds a lifetime appointment as a
National Associate of the National Academies, an appointment made by
the Council of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2003,
awarded in recognition of "extraordinary service" to the National
Academies. He is a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts &
Sciences. He served as the principal investigator and development
director of the America's Army PC game funded by the Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. He took
America's Army from conception to three million plus registered
players and hence, transformed Army recruiting.
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Conference Directors
JoAnna Baldwin Mallory
Partners Health Care
JoAnna Baldwin Mallory founded and serves as the Director of the Office of New Ventures at Partners HealthCare System, where she has undertaken a new series of programmatic initiatives designed to extend Partners mission beyond professional education to better communicate to the general public breakthroughs in scientific research and discoveries in the medical and biological sciences. The first projects to emerge under Ms. Baldwin Mallory’s leadership are Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France, an award-winning large-format film and educational project on neuroscience (for which she serves as Principal Investigator and Senior Producer); and Science + Society: Closing the Gap, an international conference on science policy and communications.
Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour uses the immersive character of the large-format ('IMAX') screen along with a powerful array of educational media (public programs, symposia, print materials and web site) to stimulate popular interest in brain biology and cutting edge science by focusing on a competitor's experiences in the most grueling athletic competition in the world — the Tour de France. Premiering in December 2005, Wired to Win is now in international distribution and was made possible by a major grant from the National Science Foundation and a title sponsorship from Ortho-McNeil Neurologics, Inc. Science + Society: Closing the Gap — an international conference examining the centrality of science in society today — will take place in Boston in January 2007, and will be among the first international conferences designed to bring together the public with those who reach, inform, and engage the public in critical scientific issues.
Ms. Baldwin Mallory began her career in documentary film production over 20 years ago when she created and oversaw production of Out of the Past, an award-winning eight-hour public television series on archaeology that premiered in primetime on PBS. Ms. Baldwin Mallory subsequently developed and directed Telling the Story: The Media, the Public, and American History, the first national conference of celebrated documentary and feature filmmakers, and historians, to assess the presentation of history on television and in feature films. She has been a long-standing member of the public television community in the United States and has held positions with stations WGBH, Boston, and WQED, Pittsburgh. Most recently, she served as a department head in a five-year tenure at flagship public television station WNET, New York. Ms. Baldwin Mallory has been a featured speaker at PBS meetings, The National Humanities Center, Showbiz Expo, and other professional gatherings, and she has served as a media reviewer for various media funders. She completed doctoral work in film history and art history (PhD/ABD) and taught courses in both film history and production.
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Hyman Field
Partners Health Care
In addition to working with Partners Health Care to develop the Science + Society: Closing the Gap conference, Dr. Field is consulting with several projects designed to inform the public about science and technology. Previously, he spent 14 years at the National Science Foundation in various positions including Senior Advisor for Public Understanding of Research; Section Head for the Informal Science Education Program; and Acting Division Director for Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education.
Dr. Field has been a leader in encouraging the informal science education field to focus on current, on-going research in their public education programs. He coauthored, “Public Understanding of Science vs. Public Understanding of Research” (Public Understanding of Science, 10 (2001) pp. 241-426), and was the leader of the two delegations of informal science educators to China and Japan.
Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Field spent 10 years at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as Senior Program Officer with the Annenberg/CPB Project. There he worked with such television projects as The Brain, Planet Earth, Voices & Visions, Ethics in America with Fred Friendly, and The Mechanical Universe. Before joining CPB, he was a producer/director for seven years at public broadcasting station, WETA, in Washington, DC, where he won two EMMY’s and numerous other production awards. He has a Ph.D. in Human Development and Curriculum and BA and MA degrees in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures, both with minors in Psychology.
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Graham Farmelo
Science Museum, London
Graham Farmelo is Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University and Senior Research Fellow at the Science Museum, London. He is an international consultant in the field of science and society.
After his PhD in theoretical physics, he was tenured at the Open University in the UK where he directed the world's largest distance-teaching science course and conceived the University's most popular inter-disciplinary science course, 'Science Matters'. In 1990, he moved to the Science Museum, London, where he pioneered the introduction of contemporary science into exhibitions and programs. He directed the exhibitions in the Museum's Wellcome Wing, devoted entirely to contemporary science and technology, which opened in 2000, and was project director of the Dana Centre, which opened in 2003.
He has directed many inter-disciplinary meetings and conferences that bring together scientists, artists, ethicists, politicians and historians. The conferences have included 'Here and Now' in 1996, was the fi