Join the Office of the Provost for the latest event in the Brown University Presidential Colloquium Series, Thinking Out Loud: Deciphering Mysteries of Our World and Beyond.

Featuring Erica Walker, RGSS Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health

With opening remarks by Provost Francis J. Doyle III

Audience Q&A and reception to follow.

About the event

Recently, while installing an air and noise pollution monitoring network in a small rural town preparing for the arrival of one of the world’s largest manufacturing plants, a simple comment from a local leader captured a deeper truth: “We didn’t think you were going to show up.” Unfortunately, this sentiment is far too common. Across the country, communities express deep skepticism toward academic researchers — especially in public health — citing broken promises, lack of follow-through and a failure to listen.

In this talk, Erica Walker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, offers a candid reflection — a “love letter” to the field of public health — on how researchers can regain the trust of the communities they seek to serve. Drawing on personal experiences as a noise pollution researcher, Walker will challenge attendees to rethink the way academic work is approached, urging a shift away from what they call “academic noise”: focusing on the wrong questions in the wrong places at the wrong time. Join us for a powerful conversation about showing up, listening deeply, and ensuring our research truly matters.

About the speaker

Erica Walker is the RGSS Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health and the founder of the Community Noise Lab. Her research focuses on measuring community-level environmental pollutants and assessing their impacts on adolescent health, particularly in overlooked and underinvested areas.

About the series

Scientists and engineers are often perceived as living intellectual lives that are mysterious — simultaneously wondrous and arcane. The Brown University Presidential Colloquium Series, Thinking Out Loud: Deciphering Mysteries of Our World and Beyond, showcases profoundly creative and accomplished scholars who not only tackle some of the biggest “Big Questions” there are, but also skillfully communicate their inner visions to broad audiences.

Sponsored by the Office of the President and the Office of the Provost

Global climate is a top-of-mind issue for much of humanity. Will our planet become unlivable? What can we do to forestall that possibility? Can we play an active role in saving our planet without massive but inherently fragile globally coordinated action? While answering these questions is difficult, it is impossible without understanding the science. But we only have one world so how do we do that science in a meaningful and predictive way? Join us as Joe Francisco, Guggenheim Fellow and National Academy of Science member, leads us through atmospheric chemistry on Earth and beyond — where modern spectroscopy is allowing us to glimpse climate trajectories of our solar neighbors and what they might have to say about our own pale blue orb’s future.

About the Event

What’s in a name? Can Black people spend their money freely? Does persistent segregation of Black people suggest a White contagion mindset? Join us as economist Trevon Logan helps us quantitatively ask the right questions about race and unpack the reasons for the enduring racial vector of social, economic, and political difference in the United States.

About the Speaker

Trevon D. Logan is the ENGIE-Axium Endowed Professor of Economics and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. He is a research associate in the Development of the American Economy Program and the director of the Race and Stratification in the Economy Working Group at the National Bureau of Economic Research. A former president of the National Economic Association, vice president of the Economic History Association, and member of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of the Minority Groups in the Economics Profession, he is currently a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Literature and the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the co-director of the American Economic Association’s Mentoring Program and member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Population.

His current research focuses on racial inequality and economic history. His international award-winning research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Economist, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, CNN, and other major media outlets. Named by Fortune magazine as “One of the 19 Black Economists You Should Know and Celebrate” in 2020, his work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Brookings Institution, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, among others. Logan received his B.S. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999, his M.A. degrees in demography and economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, and his Ph.D. in economics from University of California, Berkeley in 2004.

About the series

Scientists and engineers are often perceived as living intellectual lives that are mysterious — simultaneously wondrous and arcane. The Brown University Presidential Colloquium Series, Thinking Out Loud: Deciphering Mysteries of Our World and Beyond, showcases profoundly creative and accomplished scholars who not only tackle some of the biggest “Big Questions” there are, but also skillfully communicate their inner visions to broad audiences.

Sponsored by the Office of the Provost

Speaker

Joel Ducoste, Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Advancement in the Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Department at North Carolina State University

About the Lecture

Researchers and engineering practitioners are increasingly using machine learning-generated models as tools to make predictions on the basis of patterns in their data. While advantageous when the complexity of the observed data makes it difficult to describe through mechanistic principles or the scale of the system is too large to simulate through mechanistic principles, machines are learning, but not in the research methodology process. This leads to artificial exclusion instead of artificial intelligence. How will this pattern of blindly incorporating data driven models in everyday life and technology affect our efforts to understand our world and help motivate future STEM learners and problem solvers? Professor Ducoste will discuss the research and pedagogy challenges posed by this ever growing research tool through the lens of environmental process problems in water/wastewater treatment, plant system biology and solid waste management.

About the Series

Scientists and engineers are often perceived as living intellectual lives who are mysterious — simultaneously wondrous and arcane. The Brown University Presidential Colloquium Series Thinking Out Loud: Deciphering Mysteries of Our World and Beyond showcases profoundly creative and accomplished scholars who not only tackle some of the biggest “big questions” there are but also skillfully communicate their inner visions to broad audiences. Thinking Out Loud Presidential Colloquium speakers have considered a wide range of urgent and pervasive questions, such as “Are Bacteria Truly Social?”, “What Is Anesthesia?”, “Robots: Helpers or Agents of the Apocalypse?” and “Are We Alone?” to mention just a few.

About the Speaker

Joel Ducoste is a professor in the Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Department and the associate dean for faculty advancement at North Carolina State University. He holds a B.S. (1988) and M.Eng. (1989) in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering (1996) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a board-certified environmental engineering member through eminence with the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. Ducoste is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in modeling water and wastewater treatment processes using computational fluid dynamics. His research interests include physico-chemical processes in water treatment, computational fluid dynamics modeling, solid/liquid separation processes, chemical and UV disinfection, advance oxidation, water/wastewater process optimization, wastewater sewer collection system sustainability, biofuels production from microalgae, energy recovery from wastewater, plant biosystems engineering, and solid waste systems modeling.

Ducoste has received a number of awards including: a National Science Foundation Career Award; a Fulbright fellowship; visiting professorships at Ghent University, Southeast University and Yangzhou University; North Carolina State University mentoring awards; elected fellow of the Water Environment Federation; and the Fair Distinguished Engineering Educator Medal. He has served on Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Boards (2009-2018) and the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors Safe and Sustainable Water Resources committee (2018-2022). He was also the 2020-21 president of the Association of the Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. Ducoste spent over five years in industry at CH2M Hill as a senior process engineer and as an advance-manufacturing engineer at GE Aircraft Engines.

Speaker

Nadya Mason, Rosalyn S. Yalow Professor of Physics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

About the Lecture

Our daily lives are integrated with nanoscale electronics, which are now ubiquitous in products from smartphones to washing machines to automatic dog groomers. But is there a limit to how small electronics can be? What new devices will change our future? And how is all this related to the fact that so few cars are available to buy? In this talk, Nadya Mason will approach these questions by discussing the past and future of a key nano-electronic element, the transistor. As transistors approach the atom-scale, their operation is limited by quantum mechanical effects. Thus, radically new technologies will be needed to overcome this fundamental physical limit. Professor Mason will discuss the science and research behind some new approaches, including using novel nanomaterials and quantum computation, with a focus on graphene-based devices.

About the Speaker

Nadya Mason is the Rosalyn S. Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is founding director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and director of the Illinois Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Mason is an experimental physicist who works at the intersection of complex materials, superconductivity and nanotechnology. She is particularly recognized for her work elucidating the electronic properties of low-dimensional correlated materials, such as hybrid superconducting devices containing metal, graphene, or topological insulators.

Mason received her bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and her doctorate in physics from Stanford University and engaged in postdoctoral research as a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. She has been a general councilor of the American Physical Society (APS) and a chair of the APS Committee on Minorities and works to both improve science communication and increase diversity in the physical sciences. Her TED Talk on “How to spark your curiosity, scientifically” has over 450,000 views.

Mason is a recipient of numerous awards, including the APS Maria Goeppert Mayer Award and the APS Bouchet Award. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Science.

 

Speaker

Kristala L. J. Prather, Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering, MacVicar Faculty Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

About the Lecture

Microbial systems offer the opportunity to produce a wide variety of chemical compounds in a sustainable fashion. Economical production, however, requires processes that operate with high titer, productivity, and yield. One challenge towards maximizing yields is the need to use substrate for biomass, resulting in a competing pathway that cannot merely be eliminated. Productivities may also be significantly influenced by the timing of expression of genes in the production pathway. Dynamic metabolic engineering has emerged as a means to address these and other impediments in strain performance. Ideally, the triggers for dynamic control would be autonomous, that is, independent of any external intervention by the operator. We have developed such autonomous devices by utilizing both pathway-independent quorum-sensing circuits and pathway-dependent metabolite biosensors to control metabolic flux. In this talk, I will describe our approach for development of these Metabolite Valves and results to date from their implementation.

About the Speaker

Kristala Jones Prather is the Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. She received an S.B. degree from MIT in 1994 and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1999), and worked 4 years in BioProcess Research and Development at the Merck Research Labs prior to joining the faculty of MIT. Her research interests are centered on the design and assembly of recombinant microorganisms for the production of small molecules, with additional efforts in novel bioprocess design approaches. A particular focus is the elucidation of design principles for the production of unnatural organic compounds with engineered control of metabolic flux within the framework of the burgeoning field of synthetic biology. Prather is the recipient of an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2005), a Technology Review “TR35” Young Innovator Award (2007), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2010), the Biochemical Engineering Journal Young Investigator Award (2011), and the Charles Thom Award of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (2017). Additional honors include selection as the Van Ness Lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2012), as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2014-2015), and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; 2018). Prather has been recognized for excellence in teaching with the C. Michael Mohr Outstanding Faculty Award for Undergraduate Teaching in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering (2006, 2016), the MIT School of Engineering Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010), and through appointment as a MacVicar Faculty Fellow (2014), the highest honor given for undergraduate teaching at MIT.

Speaker

Dr. Arlie Petters, Benjamin Powell Professor of Mathematics, Dean of Academic Affairs for Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University

About the Lecture

Shadow and illumination patterns are all around us. Similar patterns are also cast throughout the universe by the gravitational fields of stars and galaxies. This talk will unveil how these cosmic shadows carry clues about the existence of extrasolar planets and a possible fifth dimension.

About the Speaker

Arlie O. Petters is the dean of academic affairs for Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. He is the Benjamin Powell Professor of Mathematics and a professor of physics and economics. Before coming to Duke, he was an assistant professor of mathematics at Princeton University from 1993-98 and an instructor of pure mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1991-93. Dr. Petters received his Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT in 1991, with a specialization in mathematical physics.

Petters’ research explores how gravity acts on light. He was the first to develop the mathematical theory of gravitational lensing, which brought powerful methods from pure mathematics to bear on astronomy. Petters also pioneered new applications of gravitational lensing in physics, predicting effects that probe the nature of spacetime around black holes and developing tests of Einstein’s general relativity and modified gravity models. He has written five books and is currently co-authoring a monograph on gravitational lensing and black holes.

Among the many awards Petters has earned for his innovative research are an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant and the first Blackwell-Tapia Prize in the mathematical sciences. He was also selected in 2006 by the National Academy of Sciences to be part of a portrait collection of outstanding African Americans in science, engineering and medicine.

In recognition of Petters’ outstanding scientific and educational accomplishments, the Queen of England appointed him a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2008 and his birthplace, Dangriga, Belize, honored him in 2009 with a street in his name.

Speaker

Lisa Gelobter CS ’91, Founder and CEO of tEQuitable

About the Lecture

From healthcare.gov, to veterans, students and immigrants, if we can send a Tesla Roadster into outer space, we can surely fix the critical issues affecting huge chunks of our population right here on our home planet. Lisa will use a User-Centered Design framework to demonstrate how the same practices of invention and innovation apply when “creating technology for good.”

About the Speaker

Brown Computer Science Alumna Lisa Gelobter is the Founder and CEO of tEQuitable, an independent, confidential platform to address issues of bias, harassment, and discrimination in the workplace. With 25 years in the industry and products that have been used by billions of people, Lisa has a deep and proven track record in software. She has worked on several pioneering Internet technologies, including Shockwave, Hulu, and the ascent of online video. Lisa’s experience ranges from small, entrepreneurial startups to large, established organizations. Most recently, she worked at the White House, in the U.S. Digital Service, serving as the Chief Digital Service Officer for the Department of Education. Previously, Lisa acted as the Chief Digital Officer for BET Networks and was a member of the senior management team for the launch of Hulu. She has an expansive background in strategy development, business operations, user-centered design, product management, and engineering. Lisa brings consumer focus and transformative practice to bear in technology, media, and the social sector.

Speaker

D. Fox Harrell, Professor of Digital Media and Artificial Intelligence, Comparative Media Studies Program & Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT

About the Lecture

Nearly everyone these days uses virtual identities, ranging from accounts for social media and online shopping to avatars in videogames or virtual reality. Given the widespread and growing use of such technologies, it is important to better understand their impacts and to establish innovative and best practices. In this talk, Harrell explores how our social identities are complicated by their intersection with computing technologies including videogames, virtual worlds, social media, and related digital media forms. With an emphasis on equity, Harrell will explore how virtual identities both implement and transform persistent issues of class, gender, sex, race, ethnicity, and the dynamically constructed social categories more generally.

About the Speaker

D. Fox Harrell is professor of digital media and AI at MIT in both the Comparative Media Studies Program and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research focuses on the relationship between imagination and computation. He founded and directs the MIT Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) to develop new forms of computational narrative, gaming, social media, and related digital media based in computer science, cognitive science, and digital media arts. Professor Harrell has worked as an interactive television producer and as a game designer. He is the author of “Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression” (MIT Press) and numerous articles and book chapters. Harrell’s research has been supported by grants from organizations including the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2010, Harrell received an NSF CAREER Award for his project Computing for Advanced Identity Representation. In 2013, he was featured in the ARTFORUM Top Ten list. In 2014-15, he was awarded a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and was recipient of the Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science and cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego. His other degrees include a master’s degree in interactive telecommunication from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a B.S. in logic and computation, a BFA in art and a minor in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He founded the company Blues Identity Systems, LLC, to consult on and develop video games, VR, social media, and emerging technologies that enable us to reimagine who we are.

Speaker

Gilda A. Barabino, Dean of The Grove School of Engineering

About the Lecture

The connection between cell biomechanics and human disease is a burgeoning area of research with important implications for human health and well-being. A better understanding of how altered mechanical properties of cells impairs organ function and causes changes in disease state, holds great promise for predicting disease onset and progression and for developing effective therapies. In the context of sickle cell anemia and osteoarthritis this presentation addresses questions of how biological processes in health and disease lead to structural changes in the cell that are accompanied by changes in mechanical characteristics, how those changes influence disease state, and how cell biomechanics can assess the efficacy of drug treatments. Probing cell biomechanics for insights into the pathophysiology of disease represents a wave of the future for diagnostics, prognostics and therapeutic strategies.

About the Speaker

Gilda A. Barabino is Dean of The Grove School of Engineering at The City College of New York, where she holds the Daniel and Frances Berg Professorship in Engineering and appointments in the Departments of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering and in the CUNY School of Medicine. Dr. Barabino’s research is broadly focused on the role of biomechanics in health and disease in the context of sickle cell disease and orthopedic tissue engineering. Her research in biomechanics spans four decades and employs innovative engineering technologies to investigate how cells and tissues respond to their mechanical environment and mechanical stimuli.

Dr. Barabino is the President of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and the Past-President of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). She is the recipient of many awards and honors; among them, AIMBE’s highest honor, the Pierre Galletti Award and an honorary doctorate from Xavier University of Louisiana. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Society. Dr. Barabino received her B.S. degree in Chemistry from Xavier University of Louisiana and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Rice University.

Speaker

Erich Jarvis, Ph.D., Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at The Rockefeller University

About the Lecture

Vocal learning, the ability to imitate and pass on vocal repertoires culturally from one generation to the next, is a rare and precious behavior displayed by several groups of birds, such as songbirds and parrots. Come hear Erich trill about the genes, evolution and mechanisms of vocal learning – and how being an underrepresented minority in the sciences provided a finely tuned ear for discoveries which bear on mammals like us.

About the Speaker

Professor Erich Jarvis, Ph.D. is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at The Rockefeller University. The ability to speak has allowed our species to pass knowledge between generations, articulate complex ideas, and build societies. Jarvis uses song-learning birds and other species as models to study the molecular and genetic mechanisms that underlie vocal learning, including how humans learn spoken language. He is interested in how their brains, and ours, have evolved to produce this complex behavior. Most recently the Jarvis lab has begun to study the molecules that guide neuronal connections, called axon guidance molecules. Jarvis hypothesizes that these molecules make the difference between a vocal learner and non-learner by directing the formation of a crucial neural circuit. This motor circuit, which has been linked to vocal organs, is believed to make fine motor control in the larynx possible, allowing the production of imitated speech. The Jarvis lab and others predict that the presence or absence of this neural circuit is one of the key transformations in the brain that enables vocal learning, and that axon guidance molecules are responsible for its creation. One of the Jarvis lab’s long-term goals is to use these molecules to induce a vocal-learning circuit in a species that can’t normally imitate speech, such as a mouse.

Speaker

Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Regents Professor, a Joaquin Bustoz Jr. Professor of Mathematical Biology and a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist at Arizona State University (ASU)

About the Lecture

Contagion is sneaky! All seems well until the Tipping Point, after which terrible things may happen – fast! The spread of fads, scientific ideas and the growth and stability of communities can also be understood as contagions. Come hear Carlos explain contagion in all its glory, including the role of initial conditions in meritocracy.

About the Speaker

Carlos Castillo-Chavez is a Regents Professor, a Joaquin Bustoz Jr. Professor of Mathematical Biology and a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist at Arizona State University (ASU). He is a fellow of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics), Founding Fellow of the AMS (American Mathematical Society) and ACE (American College of Epidemiology). Recognition of his work includes: three White House Awards (1992,1997, and 2011), the 12th American Mathematical Society Distinguished Public Service Award in 2010, the 2007 AAAS Mentor award, the 17th recipient of the SIAM Prize for Distinguished Service to the Profession and Distinguished Alumni by UW Stevens Point.

Speaker

Ayanna Howard, Ph.D., Professor and Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Endowed Chair in Bioengineering in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology

About the Lecture

The Robots are coming! The Robots are coming! The Robots are already …. Here. There has been a steady upsurge in the attention given to robots and artificial intelligence (AI) and their inevitable destruction of the human race if we are not watchful. Whether your opinion lies on one side or the other, the fact remains; robots have already become a part of our society and, in some cases, an integral part. Not to argue against being vigilant, but coupled with the doom-and-gloom messages of robots and AI, robots, with intelligence, are also being seen as beneficial, life-saving, machines for assisting us in our everyday lives. Robots, no doubt, will change our lives, and will provide new ways to support a better society. This talk provides a first look at how robots can change the texture of our day-to-day experiences and how we, as a human race, can best integrate them to enable a healthier, less stressful, equality of life, now and in the future.

About the Speaker

Ayanna Howard, Ph.D. is Professor and Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Endowed Chair in Bioengineering in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She also holds the position of Associate Chair for Faculty Development in ECE. She received her B.S. in Engineering from Brown University, her M.S.E.E. from the University of Southern California, and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. Her area of research is centered around the concept of humanized intelligence, the process of embedding human cognitive capability into the control path of autonomous systems. This work, which addresses issues of autonomous control as well as aspects of interaction with humans and the surrounding environment, has resulted in over 200 peer-reviewed publications in a number of projects – from scientific rover navigation in glacier environments to assistive robots for the home. To date, her unique accomplishments have been highlighted through a number of awards and articles, including highlights in USA Today, Upscale, and TIME Magazine, as well as being named a MIT Technology Review top young innovator and recognized as one of the 23 most powerful women engineers in the world by Business Insider. In 2013, she also founded Zyrobotics, which is currently licensing technology derived from her research and has released their first suite of therapy and educational products for children with differing needs. From 1993-2005, Dr. Howard was at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. She has also served a term as the Associate Director of Research for the Georgia Tech Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and a term as Chair of the multidisciplinary Robotics Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech.

Speaker

Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research, SETI Institute

About the Lecture

In a bold 2004 paper, Craig Venter and Daniel Cohen claimed that whereas the 20^th century had been the Century of Physics (Special and General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Big Bang Cosmology, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the Standard Model of Particle Physics…) the 21^st century would be the century of biology. They outlined the fantastic potential of genomic research to define the current century. Wondrous as these predictions were, and as rapidly as they have played out and over-delivered during this past decade, these predictions were too parochial. This century will permit us the first opportunities to study biology beyond Earth; biology as we don’t yet know it, and biology that we have exported off the surface of our planet.

The technologies needed for discovering biology beyond Earth are different depending on whether you are searching for microbes or mathematicians, and depending on whether you are searching in-situ or remotely. In many cases the necessary technologies do not yet exist, but like genomics, they will probably develop more rapidly, and in more ways, than anyone of us can now imagine.

With a single sample of biology, it is difficult to discover what is necessary and what is contingent in the evolutionary story of life on Earth. A second example will vastly expand our understanding of what is possible.

About the Speaker

Jill Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California and serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for that institution. Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She has spent the majority of her professional career attempting to answer the old human question “Are we alone?” by searching for evidence of technological civilizations beyond Earth. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. She is a Fellow of the AAAS, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Explorers Club. She was named one of the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2004, and one of the Time 25 in Space in 2012. Jill received a TED prize in 2009, two public service awards from NASA, multiple awards for communicating science to the public, and has been honored as a woman in technology. She was the 2014 Jansky Lecturer and in 2015 she became President of the California Academy of Sciences. Asteroid “74824 Tarter” (1999 TJ16) has been named in her honor.

Since the termination of funding for NASA’s SETI program in 1993, she has served in a leadership role to design and build the Allen Telescope Array and to secure private funding to continue the exploratory science of SETI. Many people are now familiar with her work as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie, Contact.

Speaker

Karine A. Gibbs, Associate Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University

About the Lecture

Bacterial Cells in our body outnumber human cells. We identify ourselves as human, but what do our friendly inhabitants identify as? Like animals, bacteria can cooperate to form colonies or battle to gain dominance - all social behaviors fueled by a somewhat mysterious ability to recognize self from other. Come hear how Karine is solving that mystery.

About the Speaker

I love puzzles, and for me, bench research is a thrilling medium—trying to piece together results into a comprehensive scientific picture. I decided to pursue a doctorate degree after undergraduate studies because I wanted to become a research professor. My goal was, and in fact continues to be, to establish a laboratory of my own where I can share the exciting process of unraveling novel biological and chemical puzzles through research mentorship, teaching, and collaboration within a larger community of other scholars.

Attending Stanford University as a graduate student was a refreshing and enlightening experience. Beyond the obvious access to high-class research, Stanford was the place where I first learned to breathe. What I mean by “breathe” is that the community at Stanford, especially my advisor Dr. Julie Theriot, encourages students to enjoy life outside of lab and to reflect deeply on one’s career goals. As a Ph.D. student, I studied the cell biology of pathogens and developed tools to follow the movements of proteins on the bacterial surface. I was a Stanford Graduate Fellow, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and an ASM Robert D. Watkins Minority Graduate Research Fellow. A similar emphasis on a work/life balance was present in Dr. E. Peter Greenberg’s research group at the University of Washington in Seattle. In my postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Greenberg, I studied cell-cell communication and social behaviors in bacteria, specifically focusing on territorial behaviors in Proteus mirabilis. Our research was published in Science Magazine and profiled in Nature Reviews Microbiology.

I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. Here I have built (and am continuing to build) a research group that examines the interface of two emerging fields: sociomicrobiology and bacterial cell biology. We are investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the ability of cells to discriminate self from non-self in the opportunistic pathogen P. mirabilis, a leading cause of urinary tract infections in patients with long-term catheterization. A visible boundary forms between swarms of different P. mirabilis strains. In contrast, swarms of the same strain do not give rise to a visible boundary and merge, indicating that P. mirabilis swarms are capable of self/non-self recognition. This self/non-self recognition behavior is similar to allorecognition in vertebrate immunity and is analogous to territoriality in animals. Fundamentally my research strives to answer: how does an organism distinguish, and subsequently separate, self from other?

Speaker

Douglas Densmore, Kern Faculty Fellow, Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering Junior Faculty Fellow, and Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University.

About the Lecture

Successful computing systems leverage their underlying technologies to solve problems humans simply cannot. Electronic systems harness the power of electrons and semiconductors. Mechanical systems use physical force and physical interactions. Biological systems represent a computing paradigm that can harness evolution/adaptation, redundancy/replication, chemistry/natural processing, and living material/organisms. Engineered, living biological systems which make decisions, process “data”, record events, adapt to specific inputs/outputs, and communicate to one another will deliver exciting new solutions in bio-therapeutics, bio-materials, bio-energy, and bio-remediation. This engineering of biological systems has been dubbed “Synthetic Biology”. In this talk, I outline my vision for “Bio-Design Automation” for synthetic biology. Specifically I highlight my research’s efforts in the specification, design, assembly, verification, and data management involved in automating synthetic biology. These challenges are addressed by a suite of software tools which draw inspiration from Electronic Design Automation. I highlight a domain specific language for synthetic biology called Eugene, an automated DNA assembly planner called Raven, and a liquid handling scheduling system called Puppeteer. In addition I discuss logic synthesis techniques for synthetic biology (Cello), hybrid microfluidic bio-computation (Fluigi), and my work with undergraduate outreach through the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. I close by discussing community and commercial involvement mechanisms via the Bio-Design Automation Consortium, the Nona Research Foundation, and Lattice Automation, Inc.

About the Speaker

Douglas Densmore is a Kern Faculty Fellow, a Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering Junior Faculty Fellow, and Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. His research focuses on the development of tools for the specification, design, and assembly of synthetic biological systems, drawing upon his experience with embedded system level design and electronic design automation (EDA). Extracting concepts and methodologies from these fields, he aims to raise the level of abstraction in synthetic biology by employing standardized biological part-based designs which leverage domain specific languages, constraint based device composition, visual editing environments, and automated assembly.

He is the director of the Cross-disciplinary Integration of Design Automation Research (CIDAR) group at Boston University, where his team of staff and postdoctoral researchers, undergraduate interns, and graduate students develop computational and experimental tools for synthetic biology. His research facilities include both a computational workspace in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as experimental laboratory space in the Boston University Center of Synthetic Biology (CoSBI).

His research interests include Computer Architecture, Embedded Systems, Logic Synthesis, Digital Logic Design, System Level Design, and Synthetic Biology.

Speaker

Richard A. Tapia, University Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering, Rice University

About the Lecture

Come hear National Medal of Science winner and 1968-70 drag racing world champion, Richard Tapia, deftly explain the delightful math lurking everywhere around us and which suffuses his personal life: from his son’s BMX bicycle racing to his own passion, drag racing. Richard is all about math at top speed.

About the Speaker

Dr. Richard A. Tapia was born to parents who immigrated from Mexico as young children in search of education. He is internationally known for his research in the computational and mathematical sciences and is a national leader in education and outreach. His current Rice positions are University Professor (only the sixth individual afforded this title in the 100 year history of Rice University), Maxfield Oshman Professor in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics , and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education. Among his many honors, Richard Tapia was a 2010 awardee of the National Medal of Science, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists and engineers, he was the first Hispanic elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 1996 President Clinton appointed him to the National Science Board. From 2001 to 2004 he chaired the National Research Council’s Board on Higher Education and the Workforce. He has received the National Science Foundation’s inaugural Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring; and the Lifetime Mentor Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also named one of 20 most influential leaders in minority math education by the National Research Council. This year Hispanic Business Magazine named Tapia one of the 100 most influential Latinos in the country. Two professional conferences have been named in his honor, recognizing his contributions to diversity: Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference and the Blackwell-Tapia Conference, whose founders described Tapia as a seminal figure who inspired a generation of African-American, Native American and Latino/Latina students to pursue careers in mathematics. Professor Tapia is recognized as a national leader in diversity and has provided leadership at a national level.

Speaker

S. James Gates, Jr., Distinguished University Professor, University Regents Professor and John H. Toll Professor of Physics, University of Maryland

About the Lecture

Our universe is a place of finely wrought balances which if disrupted even slightly could spell our doom. “Supersymmetry” may be nature’s hedge against oblivion. Come hear Jim, National Medal of Science winner, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology member, and PBS NOVA regular tell us why in his always delightfully engaging and accessible way.

About the Speaker

Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr., (born December 15, 1950) is an American theoretical physicist. He received two B.S. degrees (mathematics & physics) in 1973 and a Ph.D. degree all from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the latter in 1977. His doctoral thesis was the first thesis at MIT to deal with supersymmetry. He also completed postgraduate studies at both Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). Gates is currently a University System Regents Professor, Distinguished University Professor, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, and the Center for Particle & String Theory Director at the University of Maryland, College Park, and serves on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and the Maryland State

Board of Education (MD-BoE). He is known for his work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory. In 1984, working with M.T. Grisaru, M. Rocek, W. Siegel, Gates co-authored Superspace, the first comprehensive book on the topic of supersymmetry. In 2006, he released, the book L’arte della Fisica (The Art of Physics), and has authored over 200 scientific publications.

• Prof. Gates has been featured on many documentary programs on physics. Among these are “The Elegant Universe,” “Einstein’s Big Idea,” “Fabric of the Cosmos,” and “The Hunt for the Higgs.”
• In 2006, he completed a DVD series titled Superstring Theory: The DNA of Reality for The Teaching Company, composed of 24 half-hour lectures to make the complexities of unification theory comprehensible to non-physicists.
• In the spring of 2009, he was appointed to PCAST and MD-BoE, and serves as PCAST’s co-chair of its working group on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) preeminence for the nation.
• At the 2008 World Science Festival, Prof. Gates narrated a ballet “The Elegant Universe” with an on-line resource presentation of the artist forms (called adinkras) connected to his scientific research. This was the topic of “Symbols of power: Adinkras and the nature of reality,” a cover story of the British magazine Physics World in 2010.
• In October 2011, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• In 2012, he was named a University System of Maryland Regents Professor, only the sixth person to be so recognized since 1992.
• In 2013, President Obama awarded Prod. Gates the National Medal of Science, the highest recognition given by the U.S. to scientists with the citation, “For his contribution to the mathematics of supersymmetry in particle, field, and string theories and his extraordinary efforts to engage the public on the beauty and wonder of fundamental physics.”
• In 2013, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, becoming the first African-American physicist so recognized in its 150-year history.
• On November 16, 2013, Prof. Gates was awarded the Mendel Medal by Villanova University “in recognition of his influential work in supersymmetry, supergravity and string theory, as well as his advocacy for science and science education in the United States and abroad.”
• In January 2014, named to the National Commission on Forensic Science, Dept of Justice and National Institute of Standards & Technology,
• In March 2014, named the 2014 “Scientist of the Year” by the Harvard Foundation,
• In July 2014, made multiple presentations at the U.K.’s Cheltenham Science Festival.

He is past president of the National Society of Black Physicists, and a NSBP Fellow, as well as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Physics in the U.K. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He also is currently serving as a Distinguished Research Chair at Canada’s Perimeter Institute. He has been elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society.

His continuing research in supersymmetry, supergravity and superstring/M-theory can be seen via a link on his homepage that leads to a popular-level discussion entitled, “Symbols of Power” and “From the Mathematics of Supersymmetry to the Music of Arnold Schoenberg” (available on Youtube) as well the link marked as “Q2C Festival 2009 Talk” describing some of his current investigations on links of adinkras, error-correcting codes, and equations of fundamental physics.

Speaker

Paula T. Hammond, David H. Koch Professor of Chemical Engineering, M.I.T.

About the Lecture

The design of nanoparticles for the delivery of drugs to tumors and other specific regions of the body requires versatile chemistry and the ability to manipulate nanoparticle surfaces with the high level of control needed multiple kinds of targeting. The means by which such nanostructured particle systems can be achieved using two different approaches - block copolymers and polyelectrolyte layer-by-layer assembly (LbL) methods - will be addressed. We have used responsive synthetic polypeptide copolymers as a means of generating unique polymersome and micellar carriers. These polymers include clickable polypeptide block copolymers substituted with various amine moieties that range in pKa and hydrophobicity and designed to destabilize in the endosome. These systems can be further functionalized to target specific cells using ligand-cluster arrangement on particle surfaces, and make unique nanoscale drug carriers for systemic delivery in applications such as targeted cancer chemotherapy. On the other hand, it is possible to design nanoparticles that consist of several nanolayers wrapped around a core materials system using LbL nanoparticles. These polyelectrolyte nanolayer assemblies can be generated to increase the half-life of the particle in the bloodstream by preventing adsorption of proteins via hydrated outer layers, and acting as a “stealth” layer that prevents recognition of the particle as a foreign body by the body’s defense systems, and yet facilitate cell entry in the hypoxic tumor microenvironment and molecular targeting for specific tumor targets. We show the synergistic combination release of siRNA and chemotherapeutics in a time-dependent or staggered fashion that enables synergistic cancer cell killing effects both in vitro and in vivo. Finally, newer synthetic methods in our laboratory that include the use of rolling circle transcription to create concatenated-siRNA that can be assembled into nanostructures, and the resulting assembled systems will be discussed.

About the Speaker

Professor Paula T. Hammond is the David H. Koch Chair Professor of Engineering in the Chemical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, the MIT Energy Initiative, and a founding member of the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology. She recently served as the Executive Officer (Associate Chair) of the Chemical Engineering Department (2008-2011). The core of her work is the use of electrostatics and other complementary interactions to generate functional materials with highly controlled architecture. Her research in nanotechnology encompasses the development of new biomaterials to enable drug delivery from surfaces with spatio-temporal control. She also investigates novel responsive polymer architectures for targeted nanoparticle drug and gene delivery, and self-assembled materials systems for electrochemical energy devices.

Professor Paula Hammond was elected into the 2013 Class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also the recipient of the 2013 AIChE Charles M. A. Stine Award, which is bestowed annually to a leading researcher in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of materials science and engineering, and the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Success. She was selected to receive the Department of Defense Ovarian Cancer Teal Innovator Award in 2013, which supports a single visionary individual from any field principally outside of ovarian cancer to focus his/her creativity, innovation, and leadership on ovarian cancer research. During her sabbatical in 2013, she was a visiting scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a visiting professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, in the Chemical Engineering Department. Prof. Hammond continues to serve as an Associate Editor of the American Chemical Society journal, ACS Nano. As a part of the Year of Chemistry in 2011, she was one of the Top 100 materials scientists named by Thomson-Reuters, a recognition of the highest citation impact in the field over the past decade (2001-2011). She has published over 200 papers, and holds over 20 patents based on her research at MIT. She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineers, and the American Chemical Society Polymer Division. In 2010, she was named the Scientist of the Year by the Harvard Foundation. Other selected honors include the Melvin Calvin Lecturer at UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry, the Margaret Etters Lecturer at the University of Minnesota, and the Caltech Kavli Distinguished Lecturer. Professor Hammond’s work on multilayer tattoos for transdermal DNA vaccines was recently featured on the PBS Nova program, “Making Stuff” with David Pogue, and she was also featured in the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Catalyst Series: Women in Chemistry.

Speaker

Emery N. Brown, Professor of Computational Neuroscience, MIT, Professor of Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School

About the Lecture

Emery N. Brown will illuminate the invisible us — the ghosts of consciousness within the biological machines we are. General anesthesia is a drug-induced, reversible condition comprised of five behavioral states: unconsciousness, amnesia (loss of memory), analgesia (loss of pain sensation), akinesia (immobility), and hemodynamic stability with control of the stress response. The mechanisms by which anesthetic drugs induce the state of general anesthesia are considered one of the biggest mysteries of modern medicine. We take three approaches to decipher this mystery. First, we present findings from our human studies of general anesthesia using combined fMRI/EEG recordings, high-density EEG recordings and intracranial recordings which have allowed us to give a detailed characterization of the neurophysiology of loss and recovery of consciousness due to propofol. Second, we present a neuro-metabolic model of burst suppression, the profound state of brain inactivation seen in deep states of general anesthesia. We show that our characterization of burst suppression can be used to design a closed-loop anesthesia delivery system for control of a medically-induced coma. Finally, we demonstrate that the state of general anesthesia can be rapidly reversed by activating specific brain circuits. Our results show that it is now possible to have a detailed neurophysiological understanding of the brain under general anesthesia, and that this understanding, can be used to control anesthetic states. Hence, general anesthesia is not a mystery.

About the Speaker

Emery N. Brown received his B.A. (magna cum laude) in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College, his M.A. in statistics from Harvard University, his M.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University. He completed his internship in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his residency in anesthesiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) . He joined the faculty at MGH and Harvard Medical School in 1992 and the faculty at MIT in 2005.

Dr. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and professor of computational neuroscience at MIT, the Associate Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the Director of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program at MIT. He is the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and at MGH, and an anesthesiologist at MGH.

Dr. Brown is an anesthesiologist-statistician whose experimental research has made important conceptual and experimental contributions towards understanding the neuroscience of how anesthetics act in the brain to create the states of general anesthesia. In his methodology research he develops signal processing algorithms to characterize how the brain represents and transmits information. His research has been featured on NPR, in Scientific American, Technology Review, New York Times and in the TEDMED series.

Dr. Brown was a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) BRAIN Initiative Working Group. He is a member of the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund Board of Directors, the National Science Foundation Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee, the NIH Council of Councils, the Board of Trustees of the International Anesthesia Research Society and the Governing Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Brown is the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Independent Scientist Award, the Jerome Sacks Award from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, and an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award. Dr. Brown is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Statistical Association, the IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Institute of Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Speaker

John A. Johnson, Professor of Astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

About the Lecture

Just three years ago the prospect of finding temperate, rocky worlds around other stars was still the subject of science fiction: none had been found and reasonable estimates put us years or decades away from such a momentous discovery. All of that has changed very recently on the heels of the extraordinarily successful NASA Kepler mission. By searching for the tiny diminutions of starlight indicative of an eclipsing planet, Kepler has produced thousands of new planet candidates orbiting distant stars. Careful statistical analyses have shown that the majority of these candidates are bona fide planets, and the number of planets increases sharply toward Earth-sized bodies. Even more remarkably, many of these planets are orbiting right “next door,” around tiny red dwarf stars. I will describe our multi-telescope campaign to validate and characterize these tiny planetary systems, and present some early, exciting results that point the way to the first detection of the first Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars.

About the Speaker

Dr. John Asher Johnson received his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of Missouri-Rolla (now the Missouri University of Science and Technology), and his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. He then held a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Astronomy and Astrophysics, based at the Institute for Astronomy (University of Hawai’i). After spending four years as an assistant professor of Planetary Astronomy at Caltech, he is now a Professor of Astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He has been awarded the Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, the David & Lucile Packard Fellowship, and the AAS Newton Lacy Pierce Prize for “for major contributions to understanding fundamental relationships between extrasolar planets and their parent stars.” In 2013, he was named one of Astronomy Magazine’s “Ten Rising Stars” in astrophysics. His primary research focus is on the detection and characterization of planets outside our Solar System, commonly known as exoplanets. His most recent work is focused on studying the properties of Earth-like planets around the Galaxy’s least massive stars, commonly known as red dwarfs. His notable discoveries include three of the smallest planets discovered to date, each smaller than the Earth and one the size of Mars. His statistical analysis of planets discovered around red dwarfs has revealed that there exist 1-3 Earth-like planets per star throughout the Galaxy. In addition to papers in professional journals and conferences, his work has been featured in the magazines Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Physics Today, Discover and New Scientist.