WSF Spotlight
Friday, June 12, 2009, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Strip away the trimmings of a traditional science presentation, add cocktails, and you have the WSF Spotlight. An intimate, cabaret-style setting provides an unobstructed glimpse into the minds of some of the world's most inspired thinkers. It's a science happy-hour featuring cutting edge science and one-of-a-kind talks that promise to entertain, engage and enlighten.
MC
Emily Levine
Participants:
Kristin Baldwin’s research harnesses cutting edge stem cell technology and cloning to understand how changes to genes and genomes allow stem cells to generate all the cell types found in a complex organism. Her laboratory recently generated Fibonacci, a mouse derived entirely from a skin cell that they had transformed into a stem cell using viruses. The experiment showed that skin-derived stem cells can potentially replace embryonic stem cells in research and therapeutic applications, a result cited as one of the most important breakthroughs of 2009 by Discover.
Sean Carroll is a Senior Research Associate at the California Institute of Technology and the author of From Eternity to Here, about cosmology and the arrow of time. His research ranges over a number of topics in theoretical physics, focusing on cosmology, field theory, particle physics, and gravitation.
Dominic Johnson received a D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in political science from Geneva University. He draws on both disciplines in his work on the role of religion in the evolution of cooperative behavior, the role of evolutionary psychology in political decision-making, and how evolutionarily-based lessons from Nature can help us improve human security in the face of threats like climate change, natural disasters, and terrorism.
Emily Levine has recently upgraded herself to Emily 3.0. Emily 1.0 was a stand-up comedian, appearing in comedy clubs and on Dave Letterman’s "Late Night” TV show, among others. Emily 2.0 was a television writer/producer, working on shows such as "Designing Women", "Love and War" and "Dangerous Minds". At Universal Studios and The Walt Disney Company, she created and produced pilots for ABC, NBC, CBS and HBO.
Christopher McKay is one of the world’s leading experts on the atmosphere of Mars and the origin and evolution of life there. Dr. McKay, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, has been conducting research in Antarctica for the last 30 years, studying its Mars-like environs and the extremophiles that inhabit them.
Professor Frank Wilczek is considered one of the world's eminent theoretical physicists. In 2004, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction – key to several major problems in particle physics and beyond.Venue
92nd Street Y - TribecaThis event produced in collaboration with
