On the grounds of the Marconi Center

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2009

John Bush - MIT
“Surface Tension in Biology”

Alyssa Goodman - Harvard University
“Astronomy as I ‘See’ It”

Hopi Hoekstra - Harvard University
“What Darwin Didn’t Know: The Genetic Basis of Adaptation”

Paul McEuen - Cornell University
“Nano Carbon: From String Theory to Atomic Drums”

Jerry Mitrovica - University of Toronto
“Solving the Enigma of Global Sea Level Rise”

Paul Sherman - Cornell University
“Darwinian Medicine?”

Chris Somerville - UC Berkeley
“Development of Cellulosic Fuels”

Avi Wigderson - Institute for Advanced Studies
“The ‘P vs. NP’ Problem: Efficient Computation, Internet Security, and the Limits to Human Knowledge”

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2008

Michael Manga - UC Berkeley
"Why do volcanoes only sometimes erupt explosively?"

Avi Loeb - Harvard University
"The Past and Future of our Universe"

Susan Lindquist - MIT
"Extraordinary Surprises from Protein Folding in Biology"

Nima Arkani-Hamed - Institute for Advanced Study
"Fundamental Physics, Cosmology, and the Large Hadron Collider"

Joshua Jortner - Tel Aviv University
"Dynamics at Extremes"

David Chandler - UC Berkeley
"Dynamics on the way to forming glass, the past, present, and future"

Haynes Miller - MIT
"Knots & Numbers"

Terrie Williams - UC Santa Cruz
"The Carnivore Conundrum: How environmental perturbation is leading to a small, snarling, smelly world"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2007

Bruce Ames - UC Berkeley
“Delaying (or Accelerating) the Degenerative Diseases of Aging”

Joe DeRisi - UCSF
“Bugs, Drugs, and Microarrays”

Phillip Geissler - UC Berkeley
“Emergence of Glassy Disorder in Biological Systems”

Christian Körner - University of Basel
“Change in cash flow or capital? Plants in a CO2-rich world”

Charlie Peskin - NYU Courant Institute
"Muscle and Blood and Valves, and Electricity, too: Fluid-Structure Interaction in the Heart"

Harry Swinney - University of Texas Austin
“Emergence of Order in Physical, Chemical, and Biological Systems”

Lonnie Thompson - Ohio State University
“Glaciological Evidence of Abrupt Tropical Climate Change: Past and Present”

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2006

Karen De Valois - University of California, Berkeley
"A New Understanding of Color Vision"

Chris Dobson - Cambridge University
"Protein Folding, Molecular Evolution and Human Disease"

L. Mahadevan - Harvard University
"Shape, Flow and Movement: the Science of Everyday Life"

Akkihebbal Ravishankara - University of Colorado / NOAA
"Chemistry and Its Role in Climate"

Paul Steinhardt - Princeton University
"A Tale of Two Universes"

Steven Strogatz - Cornell University
"Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order"

Irving Weissman - Stanford University
"Stem Cells"

Xiaowei Zhuang - Harvard University
"Tracking Individual Virus Particles in Live Cells"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2005

Bonnie Bassler - Princeton University
"Tiny Conspiracies: Cell-to-Cell Communications in Bacteria"

Carolyn Bertozzi - UC Berkeley
"Chemistry in Living Systems: New Tools for Probing the Glycome"

Paul Chaikin - New York University
"Colloids and Candies"

Arup Chakraborty - UC Berkeley
"Intercellular Communication in the Adaptive Immune System"

Michael Malin - Malin Space Science Systems
"The 'New' Mars"

Lord Robert May - University of Oxford
"Hard Choices for Tomorrow's World"

David McLaughlin - New York University
"Modeling of Spatial Temporal States in Primary Visual Cortex"

Eliot Quataert - UC Berkeley
"The Big Black Hole in the Center of the Milky Way"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2004

Charles Bennett - IBM Research
"Quantum Information Processing"

Jennifer Chayes - Microsoft Research
"Phase Transitions in Computer Science: How Do You Melt A Resource Allocation System?"

George Lauder - Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology
"Fishes, Submarines, and Robots: Moving About in the Underwater World"

Chung-Pei Ma - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Astronomy
"What's the Matter with Dark Matter?"

Geoff Marcy - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Astronomy
"New Planets, Old Yellowstone, and Life in the Universe"

Sally Otto - University of British Columbia, Dept. of Zoology
"Why Have Sex? The Population Genetics of Sex and Recombination"

JoAnne Stubbe - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry
"Ribonucleotide Reductases: Radical Enzymes with Suicidal Tendencies"

David Weitz - Harvard University, Dept. of Applied Physics
"What Makes Soft Materials Soft"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2003

Sir Michael Berry - Bristol University, United Kingdom, H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory
"Making Light of Mathematics"

Louis Brus - Columbia University, Dept. of Chemistry
"Chemistry and Physics of Semiconductor Nanocrystals"

David Helfand - Columbia University, Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics
"Nuclear Physics at a Distance: Seeking Quarks at 10,000 Light Years"

Sidney Nagel - The University of Chicago, Dept. of Physics
"Shadows and Ephemera: A Post-Modern Photographic Exploration of Our Singular World"

Dianne Newman - California Institute of Technology, Geobiology & Environmental Science
"Microbe - Mineral Interactions"

Fred Nijhout - Duke University, Dept. of Biology
"The Control and Evolution of Polyphenic Development of Insects"

George Oster - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology, Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
"The Mysterious Meanderings of Myxobacteria"

Steve Wofsy - Harvard University, Dept. of Chemistry
"Forests, The Global Carbon Cycle, and Climate Change"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2002

Philip Anfinrud - National Institutes of Health, Laboratory of Chemical Physics
"Watching a Protein as it Functions: Real Time Observations Using Time-Resolved Spectroscopy and X-ray Crystallography"

Persi Diaconis - Stanford Univsersity, Dept. of Statistics
"The Problem of Thinking Too Much"

Michael Dickinson - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Integrative Biology
"The Eponymous Fly"

Ursula Goodenough - Washington University, Dept. of Cell Biology & Biochemistry
"Sex and Speciation at a Molecular Level"

Harry Gray - California Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry
"The Currents of Life: Electron Flow Through Biological Molecules"

David Jewitt - University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy
"The Solar System: Bigger & Better"

Lawrence Krauss - Case Western Reserve University, Dept. of Physics
"Life, The Universe, and Nothing: Life and Death in an Ever-expanding Universe"

Chris McKay - NASA Ames Research Center
"Life on Mars"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2001

Steven Chu - Stanford University, Dept. of Physics
"Biological Processes, One Molecule at a Time"

Christopher Garrett - University of Victoria, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
"From Millimetres to Megametres: the Interacting Scales of Ocean Physics"

David Haig - Harvard University, Botanical Museum
"The Divided Self"

Susan Kieffer - S. W. Kieffer Science Consulting
"Geological Nozzles: The Rapids of the Colorado River, Old Faithful Geyser, Mount St. Helens, and Planetary Volcanoes"

Dan Kleppner - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics
"Future Knowledge"

George Whitesides - Harvard University, Dept. of Chemistry
"Self-Assembly"

Gregory Wray - Duke University, Dept. of Biology
"Ants, Urchins, and the Hox Paradox: The Evolution of Gene Networks"

Peter Sarnak - Princeton University, Dept of Mathematics
"The Riemann Hypothesis"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 2000

Fred Adams - University of Michigan, Dept. of Physics
"Into the Dark: The long term fate and evolution of astrophysics objects in a dying universe"

Jackie Barton - California Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry
"A Different View of the DNA Double Helix: A Conduit for Charge Transport"

Ann Burke - Wesleyan University, Dept. of Biology
"Evolution and Development: Exploring intrinsic mechanisms in the evolution of morphology"

Ingrid Daubechies - Princeton University, Dept. of Mathematics
"Surfing with Wavelets"

Jack Horner - University of Montana, Museum of the Rockies
"Dinosaur debates; sorting out science from opinion"

Leo Kadanoff - University of Chicago, Depts. of Physics & Mathematics
"Making a Splash; Breaking a Neck: Physics and Complexity"

Tom Koob - Shriner's Hospital Tampa, University of South Florida, Skeletal Biology
"Biomimetic Fibers: Bridging the Gap"

Walter Pitman - Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Dept. of Earth & Environmental Science
"Noah's Flood"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 1999

Eric Cornell - University of Colorado JILA, Dept. of Physics
"The Day the Gas Stopped: Physics within a Millionth of a Degree of Absolute Zero"

Alex Filippenko - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Astronomy
"Einstein's Biggest Blunder? Evidence for Cosmic Antigravity"

Hiroo Kanamori - California Institute of Technology, Dept. of Geophysics
"Chaos and Order in Earthquakes"

Mary-Claire King - University of Washington, Dept. of Molecular Biology, Division of Medical Genetics
"The Limits of Genetic Omnipotence"

Mimi Koehl - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Integrative Biology
"Feeding, Smelling and Swimming with Hairy Little Legs"

Daniel Nocera - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physical Inorganic Chemistry
"After the Oil Runs Out, then What? Harnessing the two-Electron Bond as the Fuel Source of the Future"

Baldomero Olivera - University of Utah, Dept. of Biology
"Learning Drug Design from Venomous Cone Snails"

Steve Smale - City University of Hong Kong, Dept. of Mathematics
"On the Limits of Intelligence"

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 1998

Steven Block - Princeton University, Biological Sciences
"Biophysics of Single Molecules"

Vaughan Jones - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Mathematics
"Noncommutative Geometry"

William Kahan - University of California, Berkeley, Depts. of Mathematics and Computer Science
"How Java's Floating-Point Hurts Everyone Everywhere"

Dan Rokhsar - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Physics
"Modeling Protein Folding"

Sherwood Rowland - University of California, Irvine, Dept. of Chemistry
"Atmospheric Chemistry"

Dan Simberloff - University of Tennessee, Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
"Nonindigenous species, biological control and biodiversity"

Mike Turner - University of Chicago, Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics
"Cosmology and background anisotropies"

Nature Walk with Bill Dietrich & Mary Power - University of California, Berkeley, Depts. of Earth & Planetary Science and Integrative Biology

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS 1997

Charles Alcock - Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Dept. of Astronomy
Dark Matter

Walter Alvarez - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Earth & Planetary Science
Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction

Joe Felsenstein - University of Washington, Dept. of Genetics
Population Genetics

Robert Kirshner - Harvard University, Dept. of Astronomy
Supernovae

James Randi - James Randi Educational Foundation
Science and Pseudoscience

Carla Shatz - University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology (Neurobiology)
Brain Wiring

Chuck Stevens - Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Dept. of Neurobiology
Coding in the Brain

Richard Zare - Stanford University, Dept. of Chemistry
"Is There Life on Mars?"